LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf- ..._ 



UNITE© STATES OF AMERICA. 



It may well be that the " Essays of Elia " will be found to have 
kept their perfume, and the Letters of Charles Lamb to 
retam their old sweet savor, when " Sartor Resartus " has about as 
many readers as Bulwer's " Artificial Changeling," and nine tenths 
even of "Don Juan" lie darkening under the same deep dust that 
covers the rarely troubled pages of the "Secchia Rapita." 

A. C. Swinburne. 



No assemblage of letters, parallel or kindred to that in the hands 

of the reader, if we consider its width of range, the fruitful period 

over which it stretches, and its typical character, has ever been 

produced. 

W, C. Hazlitt on Lamb's Letters. 



THE BEST LETTERS 



OF 



CHARLES LAMB 



v\ 



lEtiiteti luiti) an Kntrotiuctiott 



By EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON 







CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 

1892 






Copyright, 

By a. C. McClurg and Co. 

A. D. 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 9 

LETTER 

I. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3^ 

II. To Coleridge 33 

III. To Coleridge 3^ 

IV. To Coleridge 5^ 

V. To Coleridge 55 

VI. To Coleridge - ^7 

VII. To Coleridge 64 

VIII. To Coleridge 66 

IX. To Coleridge .^ ........ 69 

X. To Coleridge 7° 

XI. To Coleridge 74 

XII. To Coleridge 79 

XIII. To Coleridge 85 

XIV. To Coleridge 9^ 

XV. To Robert Southey 94 

XVI. To Southey 9^ 

XVII. To Southey 99 

XVIII. To Southey . ; i°2 

XIX. To Thomas Manning 106 

XX. To Coleridge 108 

XXI. To Manning . . ' io9 

XXII. To Coleridge iio 

XXIII. To Manning "2 

XXIV. To Manning 1^5 

XXV. To Coleridge "^ 



vi CONTENTS. 

LETTER PAGE 

XXVI. To Manning 120 

XXVII. To Coleridge 122 

XXVIII. To Coleridge 125 

XXIX. To Manning 127 

XXX. To Manning 130 

XXXI. To Manning 132 

XXXII. To Manning 134 

XXXIII. To Coleridge 137 

XXXIV. To Wordsworth '. . 140 

XXXV. To Wordsworth 143 

XXXVI. To Manning 145 

XXXVII. To Manning 147 

XXXVIII. To Manning 150 

XXXIX. To Coleridge 154 

XL. To Manning 157 

XLI. To Manning 159 

XLII. To Manning i'6i 

XLIII. To William Godwin 164 

XLIV. To Manning 167 

XLV. To Miss Wordsworth i;o 

XLVI To Manning 172 

XLVII. To Wordsworth 175 

XLVIII. To Manning 179 

XLIX. To Wordsworth 186 

L. To Manning 187 

LI. To Miss Wordsworth 191 

LII. To Wordsworth 192 

LIII. To Wordsworth 194 

LIV. To Wordsworth 198 

LV. To Wordsworth 203 

LVI. To Southey 208 

LVII. To Miss Hutchinson 212 

LVIII. To Manning 213 

LIX. To Manning 217 

LX. To Wordsworth 219 

LXI. To Wordsworth 221 



CONTENTS. vii 

LETTER PAGE 

LXII. To H. Dodwell 225 

LXIII. To Mrs. Wordsworth 226 

LXIV. To Wordsworth 232 

LXV. To Manning 236 

LXVI. To Miss Wordsworth 238 

LXVII. To Coleridge 241 

LXVIII. To Wordsworth . 244 

LXIX. To John Clarke 247 

LXX. To Mr. Barron Field 249 

LXXI. To Walter Wilson 251 

LXXII. To Bernard Barton 253 

LXXIII. To Miss Wordsworth 255 

LXX IV. To Mr. and Mrs. Bruton 257 

LXXV. To Bernard Barton 259 

LXXVr. To Miss Hutchinson 261 

LXXVII. To Bernard Barton 264 

LXXVIII. To Mrs. Hazlitt 266 

LXXIX. To Bernard Barton 268 

LXXX. To Bernard Barton 270 

LXXXI. To Bernard Barton 273 

LXXXII. To Bernard Barton 275 

LXXXIII. To Bernard Barton 278 

LXXXIV. To Bernard Barton 279 

LXXXV. To Bernard Barton 281 

LXXX VI. To Wordsworth 282 

LXXXVII. To Bernard Barton 285 

LXXXVIII. To Bernard Barton . 2S6 

LXXXIX. To Bernard Barton 287 

XC. To Southey 289 

XCI. To Bernard Barton 293 

XCIT. ToJ. B. Dibdin 295 

XCin. To Henry Crabb Robinson 297 

XCIV. To Peter George Patmore 299 

XCV. To Bernard Barton 302 

XCVI. To Thomas Hood • .... 304 

XCVII. To P. G. Patmore 307 



viii CONTENTS. 

LETTER PAGE 

XCVIII. To Bernard Barton 309 

XCIX. To Procter 312 

C. To Bernard Barton 314 

CI. To Mr. Gilman 317 

CII. To Wordsworth 319 

cm. To Mrs. Hazlitt 325 

CIV. To George Dyer 328 

CV. To Dyer 330 

CVI. To Mr. Moxon 334 

CVII. To Mr. Moxon 335 



INTRODUCTION. 



No writer, perhaps, since the days of Dr. Johnson 
has been oftener brought before us in biographies, 
essays, letters, etc., than Charles Lamb. His stam- 
mering speech, his gaiter-clad legs, — " almost imma- 
terial legs," Hood called them, — his frail wisp of a 
body, topped by a head " worthy of Aristotle," his love 
of punning, of the Indian weed, and, alas ! of the kindly 
production of the juniper-berry (he was not, he owned, 
" constellated under Aquarius "), his antiquarianism of 
taste, and relish of the crotchets and whimsies of author- 
ship, are as familiar to us almost as they were to the 
group he gathered round him Wednesdays at No. 4, 
Inner Temple Lane, where " a clear fire, a clean hearth, 
and the rigor of the game" awaited them. Talfourd 
has unctuously celebrated Lamb's " Wednesday Nights." 
He has kindly left ajar a door through which poster- 
ity peeps in upon the company, — Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, 
" Barry Cornwall," Godwin, Martin Burney, Crabb 
Robinson (a ubiquitous shade, dimly suggestive of that 
figment, " Mrs. Harris "), Charles Kemble, Fanny Kelly 
(" Barbara S."), on red-letter occasions Coleridge and 
Wordsworth, — and sees them discharging the severer 
offices of the whist-table (" cards were cards " then), 
and, later, unbending their minds over poetry, criticism, 
and metaphysics. Elia was no Barmecide host, and 
the Serjeant dwells not without regret upon the solider 
business of the evening, — " the cold roast lamb or boiled 
beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming 
pots which the best tap of Fleet Street supplied," hos- 
pitably presided over by " the most quiet, sensible, and 
kind of women," Mary Lamb. 

The literati of Talfourd's day were clearly hardier 
of digestion than their descendants are. Roast lamb, 
boiled beef, " heaps of smoking roasted potatoes," pots 
of porter, — a noontide meal for a hodman, — and the 
hour midnight ! One is reminded, a propos of Miss 
Lamb's robust viands, that Eiia somewhere confesses 
to " an occasional nightmare ; " " but I do not," he 
adds, "keep a whole stud of them." To go deeper into 
this matter, to speculate upon the possible germs, the 
first vague intimations to the mind of Coleridge of the 
weird spectra of " The Ancient Mariner," the phantas- 
magoria of " Kubla Khan," would be, perhaps, over- 
refining. " Barry Cornwall," too, Lamb tells us, " had 
his tritons and his nereids gambolling before him in 
nocturnal visions." No wonder! 

It is not intended here to re- thresh the straw left by 
Talfourd, Fitzgerald, Canon Ainger, and others, in the 
hope of discovering something new about Charles Lamb. 
In this quarter, at least, the wind shall be tempered to 
the reader, — shorn as he is by these pages of a charm- 
ing letter or two. So far as fresh facts are concerned, 
the theme may fairly be considered exhausted. Num- 
berless writers, too, have rung the changes upon " poor 
Charles Lamb," "dear Charles Lamb," "gentle Charles 
Lamb," and the rest, — the final epithet, by the way, 
being one that Elia, living, specially resented: 

" For God's sake," he wrote to Coleridge, " don't make me 
ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, 
or do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago, 
when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough at 
the time you wrote the lines to feed upon such epithets ; but 
besides that the meaning of 'gentle' is equivocal at best, and 
almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of gen- 



INTR OB UC TION. 1 1 

tleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpethigs. My sentiment 
is long since vanished. I hope my -virtues have done sucking. 
I can scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, 
for I should be ashamed to believe that you could think to 
gratify me by such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some 
green-sick sonneteer." 

The indulgent pity conventionally bestowed upon 
Charles Lamb — one of the most manly, self-reliant of 
characters, to say nothing of his genius — is absurdly 
misplaced. 

Still farther be it from us to blunt the edge of appe- 
tite by sapiently essaying to " analyze " and account for 
Lamb's special zest and flavor, as though his writings, 
or any others worth the reading, were put together upon 
principles of clockwork. We are perhaps over-fond 
of these arid pastimes nowadays. It is not the "sweet 
musk-roses," the " apricocks and dewberries " of litera- 
ture that please us best ; like Bottom the Weaver, we 
prefer the " bottle of hay." What a mockery of right 
enjoyment our endless prying and sifting, our hunting 
of riddles in metaphors, innuendoes in tropes, ciphers in 
Shakspeare ! Literature exhausted, we may turn to art, 
and resolve, say, the Sistine Madonna (I deprecate the 
Manes of the " Divine Painter ") into some ingenious 
and recondite rebus. For such critical chopped-hay — 
sweeter to the modern taste than honey of- Hybla — 
Charles Lamb had little relish. " I am, sir," he once 
boasted to an analytical, unimaginative proser who had 
insisted upon explaining some quaint passage in Mar- 
vel! or Wither, " I am, sir, a matter-of-lie man." It was 
his best warrant to sit at the Muses' banquet. Charles 
Lamb was blessed with an intellectual palate as fine as 
Keats's, and could enjoy the savor of a book (or of that 
dainty, " in the whole mtindtis edibilis the most delicate," 
Roast Pig, for that matter) without pragmatically ask- 
ing, as the king did of the apple in the dumpling, " how 
the devil it got there." His value as a critic is grounded 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

in this capacity of naive enjoyment (not of pig, but of 
literature), of discerning beauty and making us discern 
it, — thus adding to the known treasures and pleasures 
of mankind. 

Suggestions not unprofitable for these later days lurk 
in these traits of Eha the student and critic. How 
worthy the imitation, for instance, of those disciples who 
band together to treat a fine poem (of Browning, say, 
or Shelley) as they might a chapter in the Revelation, 
— speculating sagely upon the import of the seven seals 
and the horns of the great beast, instead of enjoying 
the obvious beauties of their author. To the school- 
master — whose motto would seem too often to be the 
counsel of the irate old lady in Dickens," Give him a meal 
of chaff ! " — Charles Lamb's critical methods are rich 
in suggestion. How many ingenuous boys, lads in the 
very flush and hey-day of appreciativeness of the epic 
virtues, have been parsed, declined, and conjugated into 
an utter detestation of the melodious names of Homer 
and Virgil ! Better far for such victims had they, in- 
stead of aspiring to the vanities of a " classical educa- 
tion/' sat, like Keats, unlearnedly at the feet of quaint 
Chapman, or Dryden, or even of Mr. Pope. 

Perhaps, by way of preparative to the reading of 
Charles Lamb's letters, it will be well to run over once 
more the leading facts of his life. First let us glance 
at his outward appearance. Fortunately there are a 
number of capital pieces of verbal portraiture of Elia. 

Referring to the year 1817, " Barry Cornwall" wrote: 

" Persons who had been in the habit of traversing Covent 
Garden at that time of night, by extending their walk a few 
yards into Russell Street have noticed a small, spare man 
clothed in black, who went out every morning, and returned 
every afternoon as the hands of the clock moved toward 
certain hours. You could not mistake him. He was some- 
what stiff in his manner, and almost clerical in dress, which 
indicated much wear. He had a long, melancholy face, with 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

keen, penetrating eyes; and he walked with a short, resolute 
step citywards. He looked no one in the face for more than 
a momentj yet contrived to see everything as he went on. 
No one who ever studied the human features could pass him 
by without recollecting his countenance ; it was full of sen- 
sibility, and it came upon you like new thought, which you 
could not help dwelling upon afterwards : it gave rise to 
meditation, and did you good. This small, half-clerical man 
was — Charles Lamb." 

His countenance is thus described by Thomas Hood : 

•* His was no common face, none of those willow-pattern 
ones which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries, 
but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, — one 
to the set ; unique, antique, quaint, you might have sworn to 
it piecemeal, — a separate affidavit to each feature." 

Mrs. Charles Mathews, wife of the comedian, who 
met Lamb at a dinner, gives an amusing account of 
him : — 

" Mr. Lamb's first appearance was not prepossessing. His 
figure was small and mean, and no man was certainly ever 
less beholden to his tailor. His 'bran' new suit of black 
cloth (in which he affected several times during the day to 
take great pride, and to cherish as a novelty that he had 
looked for and wanted) was drolly contrasted with his very 
rusty silk stockings, shown from his knees, and his much too 
large, thick shoes, without polish. His shirt rejoiced in a wide, 
ill-plaited frill, and his very small, tight, white neckcloth was 
hemmed to a fine point at the ends that formed part of a lit- 
tle bow. His hair was black and sleek, but not formal, and 
his face the gravest I ever saw, but indicating great intellect, 
and resembling very much the portraits of Charles I." 

From this sprightly and not too flattering sketch we 
may turn to Serjeant Talfourd's tender and charming 
portrait, — slightly idealized, no doubt ; for the man of 
the coif held a brief for his friend, and was a poet 
besides : — 

" Methinks I see him before me now as he appeared then, 
and as he continued without any perceptible alteration to me, 



1 4 INTR on UC TION. 

during the twenty years of intimacy which followed, and were 
closed by his death. A light frame, so fragile that it seemed 
as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, 
was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most 
noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an 
expanded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with 
varying expression, though the prevalent expression was 
sad ; and the nose, slightly curved, and delicately carved at 
the nostril, with the lower outline of the face delicately oval, 
completed a head wliich was finely placed upon the shoulders, 
and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and 
shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its 
quivering sweetness, and fix it forever in words ? There are 
none, alas ! to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep 
thought, striving with humor ; the lines of suffering wreathed 
into cordial mirth, and a smile of painful sweetness, present 
an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. His per- 
sonal appearance and manner are not unjustly characterized 
by what he himself says in one of his letters to Manning,^ 
' a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.' " 

The writings of Charles Lamb abound in passages of 
autobiography. " I was born," he tells us in that delight- 
ful sketch, "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," 
" and passed the first seven years of my life in the Tem- 
ple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its 
river, I had almost said, — for in those young years 
what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that 
watered our pleasant places ? — these are of my oldest 
recollections." His father, John Lamb, the " Lovel " 
of the essay cited, had come up a little boy from Lin- 
colnshire to enter the service of Samuel Salt, — one of 
those " Old Benchers " upon whom the pen of Elia 
has shed immortality, a stanch friend and patron to 
the Lambs, the kind proprietor of that " spacious closet 
of good old English reading " upon whose " fair and 
wholesome pasturage " Charles and his sister, as 
children, " browsed at will." 

1 Letter L. 



INTROD UCTION, 1 5 

John Lamb had married Elizabeth Field, whose 
mother was for fifty years housekeeper at the country- 
seat of the Plumers, Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, the 
" Blakesmoor " of the Essays, frequent scene of Lamb's 
childish holiday sports, — a spacious mansion, with its 
park and terraces and " firry wilderness, the haunt of the 
squirrel and day-long murmuring wood-pigeon ; " an 
Eden it must have seemed to the London-bred child, in 
whose fancy the dusty trees and sparrows and smoke- 
grimed fountain of Temple Court had been a pastoral. 
Within the cincture of its excluding garden-walls, wrote 
Elia in later years, " I could have exclaimed with that 
garden-loving poet,^ — 

" * Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And oh, so close your circles lace 
That I may never leave this place : 
But lest your fetters prove too weak. 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 
Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briers, nail me through.' " 

At Blakesware, too, was the room whence the spirit 
of Sarah Battle — that " gentlewoman born " — winged 
its flight to a region where revokes and "luke-warm 
gamesters " are unknown. 

To John and Elizabeth Lamb were born seven chil- 
dren, only three of whom, John, Mary, and Charles, 
survived their infancy. Of the survivors, Charles was 
the youngest, John being twelve and Mary ten years 
his senior, — a fact to be weighed in estimating the 
heroism of Lamb's later life. At the age of seven, 
Charles Lamb, "son of John Lamb, scrivener, and 
Elizabeth, his wife," was entered at the school of 
Christ's Hospital, — " the antique foundation of that 
godly and royal child King Edward VL" Of his life 

1 Cowley. 



l6 INTRODUCTION. 

at this institution he has left us abundant and charming 
memorials in the Essays, *' Recollections of Christ's 
Hospital," and " Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years 
Ago," — the latter sketch corrective of the rather op- 
timistic impressions of the former. 

With his schoolfellows Charles seems to have been, 
despite his timid and retiring disposition (he said of 
himself, "while the others were all fire and play, he 
stole along with all the self-concentration of a young 
monk "), a decided favorite. " Lamb," wrote C. V. Le 
Grice, a schoolmate often mentioned in essay and 
letter, " was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible and 
keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and 
by his master on account of his infirmity of speech. 
... I never heard his name mentioned without the 
addition of Charles, although, as there was no other 
boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unneces- 
sary ; but there was an implied kindness in it, and it 
was a proof that his gentle manners excited that 
kindness." 

For us the most important fact of the Christ's Hospi- 
tal school-days is the commencement of Lamb's life-long 
friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, two years his 
senior, and the object of his fervent hero-worship. 
Most of us, perhaps, can find the true source of what- 
ever of notable good or evil we have effected in life in 
the moulding influence of one of these early friendships 
or admirations. It is the boy's hero, the one he loves 
and reverences among his schoolfellows, — not his task- 
master, — that is his true teacher, the setter of the 
broader standards by which he is to abide through life. 
Happy the man the feet of whose early idols have not 
been of clay. 

It was under the quickening influence of the eloquent, 
precocious genius of the " inspired charity boy " that 
Charles Lamb's ideals and ambitions shaped themselves 
out of the haze of a child's conceptions. Coleridge at 



INTRODUCTION. 1 7 

sixteen was already a poet, his ear attuned to the 
subtlest melody of verse, and his hand rivalling, in pre- 
luding fragments, the efforts of his maturer years ; he 
was already a philosopher, rapt in Utopian schemes 
and mantling hopes as enchanting — and as chimerical 
— as the pleasure-domes and caves of ice decreed by 
Kubla Khan ; and the younger lad became his ardent 
disciple. 

Lamb quitted Christ's Hospital, prematurely, in No- 
vember, 1787, and the companionship of the two friends 
was for a time interrupted. To part with Coleridge, to 
exchange the ease and congenial scholastic atmosphere 
of the Hospital for the res angiista domi, for the intel- 
lectual starvation of a life of counting-house drudgery, 
must have been a bitter trial for him. But the shadow of 
poverty was upon the little household in the Temple ; on 
the horizon of the future the blackening clouds of anxie- 
ties still graver were gathering ; and the youngest child 
was called home to share the common burden. 

Charles Lamb was first employed in the South Sea 
House, where his brother John ^ — a cheerful optimist, 
a dilettante in art, genial, prosperous, thoroughly selfish, 
in so far as the family fortunes were concerned an out- 
sider — already held a lucrative post. It was not long 
before Charles obtained promotion in the form of a 
clerkship with the East India Company, — one of the 
last kind services of Samuel Salt, who died in the same 
year, 1792, — and with the East India Company he 
remained for the rest of his working life. 

Upon the death of their generous patron the Lambs 
removed from the Temple and took lodgings in Little 
Queen Street, Holborn ; and for Charles the battle of 
life may be said to have fairly begun. His work as a 
junior clerk absorbed, of course, the greater part of his 
day and of his year. Yet there were breathing-spaces : 
there were the long evenings with the poets ; with Mar- 

1 The James Elia of the essay " My Relations." 
2 



1 8 INTRODUCTION. 

lowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cow- 
ley, — " the sweetest names, which carry a perfume in 
the mention ; " there were the visits to the play, the 
yearly vacation jaunts to simny Hertfordshire. The 
intercourse with Coleridge, too, was now occasionally 
renewed. The latter had gone up to Cambridge early 
in 1791, there to remain — except the period of his six 
months' dragooning — for the next four years. During 
his visits to London it was the habit of the two school- 
fellows to meet at a tavern near Smithfield, the " Sal- 
utation and Cat," to discuss the topics dear to both ; and 
it was about this time that Lamb's sonnet to Mrs Sid- 
dons, his first appearance in print, was published in the 
" Morning Chronicle." 

The year 1796 was a terribly eventful one for the 
Lambs. There was a taint of insanity in the family 
on the father's side, and on May 27, 1796, we find 
Charles writing to Coleridge these sad words, — doubly 
sad for the ring of mockery in them : — 

" My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six 
weeks that finished last year and began this, your very 
humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at 
Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite 
any one. But mad I was ! " ^ 

Charles, thanks to the resolution with which he com- 
bated the tendency, and to the steadying influence of 
his work at the desk, — despite his occasional murmurs, 
his best friend and sheet-anchor in life, — never again 
succumbed to the family malady ; but from that mo- 
ment, over his small household. Madness — like Death 
in Milton's vision — continually " shook its dart," and 
at best only " delayed to strike." ^ 

It was in the September of 1796 that the calamity 
befell which has tinged the story of Charles and Mary 

1 Letter I. 2 Talfourd's Memoir. 



INTRO D UC TION. 1 9 

Lamb with the sombrest hues of the Greek tragedy. 
The family were still in the Holborn lodgings, — the 
mother an invalid, the father sinking into a second 
childhood. Mary, in addition to the burden of min- 
istering to her parents, was working for their support 
with her needle. 

At this point it will be well to insert a prefatory word 
or two as to the character of Mary Lamb ; and here 
the witnesses are in accord. There is no jarring of 
opinion, as in her brother's case ; for Charles Lamb 
has been sorely misjudged, — often, it must be admitted, 
with ground of reason ; sometimes by persons who might 
and should have looked deeper. In a notable instance, 
the heroism of his life has been meanly overlooked by 
one who preached to mankind with the eloquence of 
the Prophets the prime need and virtue of recognizing 
the hero. If self-abnegation lies at the root of true hero- 
ism, Charles Lamb — that " sorry phenomenon " with 
an " insuperable proclivity to gin " ^ — was a greater 
hero than was covered by the shield of Achilles. The 
character of Mary Lamb is quickly summed up. She 
was one of the most womanly of women. "In all its 
essential sweetness," says Talfourd, "her character 
was like her brother's ; while, by a temper more placid, 
a spirit of enjoyment more serene, she was enabled 
to guide, to counsel, to cheer him, and to protect him 
on the verge of the mysterious calamity, from the 
depths of which she rose so often unruffled to his side. 
To a friend in any difficulty she was the most comfort- 
able of advisers, the wisest of consolers." Hazlitt said 
that " he never met with a woman who could reason, 
and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable, — 
Mary Lamb." The writings of Elia are strewn, as 
we know, with the tenderest tributes to her worth. " I 
wish, " he says, " that I could throw into a heap the 

^ Carlyle. 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

remainder of our joint existences, that we might share 
them in equal division." 

The psychology of madness is a most subtle inquiry. 
How slight the mysterious touch that throws the 
smooth-running human mechanism into a chaos of 
jarring elements, that transforms, in the turn of an 
eyelash, the mild humanity of the gentlest of beings 
into the unreasoning ferocity of the tiger. 

The London "Times" of September 26, 1796, con- 
tained the following paragraph : — 

" On Friday afternoon the coroner and a jury sat on the 
body of a lady in the neighborhood of Holborn, who died in 
consequence of a wound from her daughter the preceding day. 
It appeared by the evidence adduced that while the family 
were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife 
lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little 
girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her 
infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first object, and 
with loud shrieks approached her parent. The child, by her 
cries, quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but too 
late.i The dreadful scene presented him the mother lifeless, 
pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly stand- 
ing over her with the fatal knife, and the old man, her father, 
weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from 
the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the forks 
she had been madly hurling about the room. 

" For a few days prior to this, the family had observed 
some symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much in- 
creased on the Wednesday evening that her brother, early 
the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn ; but that gentleman 
was not at home. 

" The jury of course brought in their verdict, — Lunacy''' 

I need not supply the omitted names of the actors in 
this harrowing scene. Mary Lamb was at once placed 

^ It would seem from Lamb's lettter to Coleridge (Letter IV.) that 
it was he^ not the landlord, who appeared thus too late, and who 
snatched the knife from the unconscious hand. 



INTR on UC TION. 2 1 

in the Asylum at Hoxton, and the victim of her frenzy 
was^ laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, 
Holborn. It became necessary for Charles and his 
father to make an immediate change of residence, and 
they took lodgings at Pentonville. There is a pregnant 
sentence in one of Lamb's letters that flashes with the 
vividness of lightning into the darkest recesses of those 
early troubles and embarrassments. " We are," he wrote 
to Coleridge, " m a manner iiiarked.'''' 

Charles Lamb after some weeks obtained the release 
of his sister from the Hoxton Asylum by formally un- 
dertaking her future guardianship, — a charge which was 
borne, until Death released the compact, with a stead- 
fastness, a cheerful renunciation of what men regard as 
the crowning blessings of manhood,^ that has shed a 
halo more radiant even than that of his genius about 
the figure — it was "small and mean," said sprightly 
Mrs. Mathews — of the India House clerk. 

As already stated, the mania that had once attacked 
Charles never returned ; but from the side of Mary 
Lamb this grimmest of spectres never departed. " Mary 
is again/r<?;;2 homej " " Mary \^ fallen ill again : " how 
often do such tear-fraught phrases — tenderly veiled, lest 
some chance might bring them to the eye of the blame- 
less sufferer — recur in the Letters ! Brother and sister 
were ever on the watch for the symptoms premonitory 
of the return of this " their sorrow's crown of sorrows." 
Upon their little holiday excursions, says Talfourd, a 
strait-waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb herself, 
was their constant companion. Charles Lloyd relates 
that he once met them slowly pacing together a little 
footpath in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, and 
found on joining them that they were taking their solemn 
way to the old asylum. Thus, upon this guiltless pair 
were visited the sins of their fathers. 

^ The reader is referred to Lamb's beautiful essay, "Dream 
Children." 



2 2 INTR on UC TION. 

With the tragical events just narrated, the stonn of 
calamity seemed to have spent its force, and there were 
thenceforth plenty of days of calm and of sunshine for 
Charles Lamb. The stress of poverty was lightened 
and finally removed by successive increases of salary at 
the India House ; the introductions of Coleridge and 
his own growing repute in the world of letters gathered 
about him a circle of friends — Southey, Wordsworth, 
Hazlitt, Manning, Barton, and the rest — more con- 
genial, and certainly more profitable, than the vagrant 
zjitimados, " to the world's eye a ragged regiment," 
who had wasted his substance and his leisure in the 
early Temple days. 

Lamb's earliest avowed appearance as an author was 
in Coleridge's first volume of poems, published by Cottle, 
of Bristol, in 1796. " The effusions signed C. L.," says 
Coleridge in the preface, " were written by Mr. Charles 
Lamb, of the India House. Independently of the sig- 
nature, their superior merit would have sufficiently dis- 
tinguished them." The " effusions " were ^four sonnets, 
two of them — the most noteworthy — touching upon 
the one love-romance of Lamb's lif e,^ — his earl)' attach- 
ment to the " fair-haired " Hertfordshire girl, the " Anna " 

of the Sonnets, the "Alice W n" of the Essays. 

We remember that Elia in describing the gallery of old 

family portraits, in the essay, " Blakesmoor in H 

shire," dwells upon " that beauty with the cool, blue, 
pastoral drapery, and a lamb, that hung next the great 
bay window, with the bright yellow Hertfordshire hair, 
so like Diy Alice.'''' 

In 1797 Cottle issued a second edition of Coleridge's 
poems, this time with eleven additional pieces by Lamb, 
— making fifteen of his in all, — and containing verses 
by their friend Charles Lloyd. " It is unlikely," observes 

^ If we except his passing tenderness for the young Quakeress, 
Hester Savory. Lamb admitted that he had never spoken to the 
lady in his hfe. 



INTR OD UC TION. 2 3 

Canon Ainger, " that this little venture brought any profit 
to its authors, or that a subsequent volume of blank verse 
by Lamb and Lloyd in the following year proved more 
remunerative." In 1798 Lamb, anxious for his sister's 
sake to add to his slender income, composed his " minia- 
ture romance," as Talfourd calls it, " Rosamund Gray ; " 
and this little volume, which has not yet lost its charm, 
proved a moderate success. Shelley, writing from Italy 
to Leigh Hunt in 1 819, said of it : " What a lovely thing 
is his ' Rosamund Gray ' ! How much knowledge of the 
sweetest and deepest part of our nature in it ! When I 
think of such a mind as Lamb's, when I see how un- 
noticed remain things of such exquisite and complete 
perfection, what should I hope for myself if I had not 
higher objects in view than fame 1 " 

It is rather unpleasant, in view of this generous — if 
overstrained — tribute, to find the object of it referring 
later to the works of his encomiast as " thin sown with 
profit or delight," ^ 

In 1802 Lamb published in a small duodecimo his 
blank-verse tragedy, " John Woodvil,"— it had previ- 
ously been declined by John Kemble as unsuited to the 
stage, — and in 1806 was produced at the Drury Lane 
Theatre his farce " Mr. H.," the summary failure of 
which is chronicled with much humor in the Letters.^ 

The "Tales from Shakspeare," by Charles and Mary 
Lamb, were pubHshed by Godwin in 1807, and a 
second edition was called for in the following year. 
Lamb was now getting on surer — and more remunera- 
tive — ground; and in 1808 he prepared for the firm 
of Longmans his masterly " Specimens of the English 
Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shakspeare." Con- 
cerning this work he wrote to Manning : — 

"Specimens are becoming fashionable. We have Speci- 
mens of Ancient English Poets, Specimens of Modern Eng- 

1 Letter LXXXIII 2 Letters LXVII., LXVIIL, LXIX. 



2 4 INTR 01) UC TION. 

lish Poets, Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers, 
without end. They used to be called ' Beauties.' You have 
seen Beauties of Shakspeare ? so have many people that 
never saw any beauties in Shakspeare." 

From Charles Lamb's " Specimens " dates, as we 
know, the revival of the study of the old English 
dramatists other than Shakespeare. He was the first 
to call attention to the neglected beauties of those great 
Elizabethans, Webster, Marlowe, Ford, Dekker, Mas- 
singer, — no longer accounted mere " mushrooms that 
sprang up in a ring under the great oak of Arden." ^ 

The opportunity that was to call forth Lamb's special 
faculty in authorship came late in life. In January, 1820, 
Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, the publishers, brought out 
the first number of a new monthly journal under the 
name of an earlier and extinct periodical, the " London 
Magazine," and in the August number appeared an 
article, " Recollections of the South Sea House," over 
the signature EliaP- With this delightful sketch the 
essayist Elia may be said to have been born. In none 
of Lamb's previous writings had there been more than a 
hint of that unique vein, — wise, playful, tender, fantas- 
tic, " everything by starts, and nothing long," exhibited 
with a felicity of phrase certainly unexcelled in English 
prose literature, — that we associate with his name. The 
careful reader of the Letters cannot fail to note that it 
is there that Lamb's peculiar quality in authorship is 
first manifest. There is a letter to South ey, written as 
early as 1798, that has the true Elia ring.^ With the 
"London Magazine," which was discontinued in 1826, 

1 W. S. Landor. 

2 In assuming this pseudonym Lamb- borrowed the name of a 
fellow-clerk who had served with him thirty years before in the Soutli 
Sea House, — an Italian named Elia. The name has probably never 
been pronounced as Lamb intended. " Call him Ellia^'' he said in 
a letter to J. Taylor, concerning this old acquaintance. 

8 Letter XV 11. 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

Elia was born, and with it he may be said to have died, 
— although some of his later contributions to the " New 
Monthly " 1 and to the " Englishman's Magazine " were 
included in the " Last Essays of Elia," collected and pub- 
lished in 1833. The first series of Lamb's essays under 
the title of Elia had been published in a single volume by 
Taylor and Hessey, of the " London Magazine," in 1823. 

The story of Lamb's working life — latterly an un- 
eventful one, broken chiefly by changes of abode and 
by the yearly holiday jaunts, "migrations from the 
blue bed to the brown" — from 1796, when the cor- 
respondence with Coleridge begins, is told in the letters. 
For thirty-three years he served the East India Com- 
pany, and he served it faithfully and steadily. There 
is, indeed, a tradition that havmg been reproved on one 
occasion for coming to the office late in the morning, he 
pleaded that he always left it " so very early in the 
evening." Poets, we know, often "heard the chimes 
at midnight " in Elia's day, and the plea has certainly 
a most Lamb-like ring. That the Company's directors, 
however, were more than content with the service of 
their literate clerk, the sequel shows. 

It is manifest in certain letters, written toward the 
close of 1824 and in the beginning of 1825, that Lamb's 
confinement was at last telling upon him, and that he 
was thinking of a release from his bondage to the 
" desk's dead wood." In February, 1825, he wrote to 
Barton, — 

'* Your gentleman brother sets my mouth watering after 
liberty. Oh that I were kicked out of Leadenhall with 
every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob ! The 
birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How 
I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and 
ramble about purposeless as an idiot ! " 

1 The rather unimportant series, " Popular Fallacies, " appeared 
in the " New Monthly." 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

Later in March we learn that he had signified to the 
directors his wilHngness to resign. 

" I am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agi- 
tation that is to turn up my fortune ; but round it rolls, 
and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of 
becoming a gentleman at large, but I am put off from day 
to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither ac- 
cepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fear- 
ful suspense. Guess what an absorbing state I feel it. I am 
not conscious of the existence of friends, present or absent. 
The East India directors alone can be that thing to me. I 
have just learned that nothing will be decided this week. 
Why the next ? Why any week ? " 

But the " grand wheel " was really turning to some 
purpose, and a few days later, April 6, 1825, he joyfully 
wrote to Barton, — 

"My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my 
recent emancipation that I have scarce steadiness of hand, 
much more mind, to compose a letter. I am free, B. B., 
— free as air ! 

" ' The little bird that wings the sky 
Knows no such liberty.' 

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I 
came home forever ! '* 

The quality of the generosity of the East India 
directors was not strained in Lamb's case. It should 
be recorded as an agreeable commercial phenomenon 
that these officials, men of business acting in " a busi- 
ness matter," — words too often held to exclude all such 
Quixotic matters as sentiment, gratitude, and Christian 
equity between man and man, — were not only just, but 
munificent. ^ From the path of Charles and Mary 
Lamb — already beset with anxieties grave enough — 

1 In the essay " The Superannuated Man " Lamb describes, with 
certain changes and modifications, his retirement from the India 
House. 



iNTR on uc tion: 2 7 

they removed forever the shadow of want. Lamb's 
salary at the time of his retirement was nearly seven 
hundred pounds a year, and the offer made to him was 
a pension of four hundred and fifty, with a deduction 
of nine pounds a year for his sister, should she survive 
him. 

Lamb lived to enjoy his freedom and the Company's 
bounty nearly nine years. Soon after his retirement he 
settled with his sister at Enfield, within easy reach of 
his loved London, removing thence to the neighboring 
parish of Edmonton, — his last change of residence. 
Coleridge's death, in July, 1834, was a heavy blow to 
him. " When I heard of the death of Coleridge," he 
wrote, " it was without grief. It seemed to me that he 
had long been on the confines of the next world, that 
he had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could 
not grieve ; but since, I feel how great a part he was of 
me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot 
think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or 
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to 
him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogi- 
tations." Lamb did not long outlive his old schoolfellow. 
Walking in the middle of December along the London 
road, he stumbled and fell, inflicting a slight wound upon 
his face. The injury at first seemed trivial ; but soon 
after, erysipelas appearing, it became evident that his 
general health was too feeble to resist. On the 27th of 
December, 1834, he passed quietly away, whispering in 
his last moments the names of his dearest friends. 

Mary Lamb survived her brother nearly thirteen years, 
dying, at the advanced age of eighty-two, on May 20, 
1847. With increasing years her attacks had become 
more frequent and of longer duration, till her mind be- 
came permanently weakened. After leaving Edmon- 
ton, she lived chiefly in a pleasant house in St. John's 
Wood, surrounded by old books and prints, under the 
care of a nurse. Her pension, together with the income 



28 INTRODUCTION. 

from her brother's savings, was amply sufficient for 
her support. 

Talfourd, who was present at the burial of Mary 
Lamb, has eloquently described the earthly reunion of 
the brother and sister : — 

"A few survivors of the old circle, then sadly thinned, 
attended her remains to the spot in Edmonton churchyard 
where they were laid, above those of her brother. In accord- 
ance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as it could be gathered 
from his expressions on a subject to which he did not often 
or willingly refer, he had been interred in a deep grave, simply 
dug and wattled round, but without any affectation of stone 
or brickwork to keep the human dust from its kindred earth. 
So dry, however, is the soil of the quiet churchyard that the 
excavated earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, and permitted 
us just to catch a glimpse of the still untarnished edges of the 
coffin, in which all the mortal part of one of the most delight- 
ful persons who ever lived was contained, and on which the 
remains of her he had loved with love ' passing the love of 
woman' were henceforth to rest, — the last glances we shall 
ever have even of that covering, — concealed from us as we 
parted by the coffin of the sister. We felt, I believe, after 
a moment's strange shuddering, that the reunion was well 
accomplished ; although the true-hearted son of Admiral 
Burney, who had known and loved the pair we quitted 
from a child, and who had been among the dearest objects of 
existence to him, refused to be comforted." 

There are certain handy phrases, the legal-tender of 
conversation, that people generally use without troubling 
themselves to look into their title to currency. It is 
often said, for instance, with an air of deploring a phase 
of general mental degeneracy, that " letter-writing is a 
lost art." And so it is, — not because men nowadays, if 
they were put to it, could not, on the average, write as 
good letters as ever (the average, although we certainly 
have no Lambs, and perhaps no Walpoles or Southeys 
to raise it, would probably be higher), but because the 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

conditions that call for and develop the epistolary art 
have largely passed away. With our modern facility of 
communication, the letter has lost the pristine dignity 
of its function. The earth has dwindled strangely 
since the advent of steam and electricity, and in a 
generation used to Mr. Edison's devices. Puck's girdle 
presents no difficulties to the imagination. In Charles 
Lamb's time the expression " from Land's End to John 
O'Groat's" meant something; to-day it means a few 
comfortable hours by rail, a few minutes by telegraph. 
Wordsworth in the North of England was to Lamb, so 
far as the chance of personal contact was concerned, 
nearly as remote as Manning in China. Under such 
conditions a letter was of course a weighty matter ; 
it was a thoughtful summary of opinion, a rarely re- 
curring budget of general intelligence, expensive to 
send, and paid for by the recipient ; and men put their 
minds and energies into composing it. " One wrote at 
that time," says W. C. Hazlitt, " a letter to an acquaint- 
ance in one of the home counties which one would only 
write nowadays to a settler in the Colonies or a relative 
in India." 

But to whatever conditions or circumstances we may 
owe the existence of Charles Lamb's letters, their qual- 
ity is of course the fruit of the genius and temperament 
of the writer. Unpremeditated as the strain of the sky- 
lark, they have almost to excess (were that possible) the 
prime epistolary merit of spontaneity. From the brain 
of the writer to the sheet before him flows an unbroken 
Pactolian stream. Lamb, at his best, ranges with 
Shakspearian facility the gamut of human emotion, 
exclaiming, as it were at one moment, with Jaques, 
" Motley 's the only wear ! " — in the next probing the 
source of tears. He is as ejaculatory with his pen as 
other men are with their tongues. Puns, quotations, con- 
ceits, critical estimates of the rarest insight and sug- 
gestiveness, chase each other over his pages like clouds 



so INTRODUCTION. 

over a summer sky ; and the whole is leavened with the 
sterling ethical and aesthetic good sense that renders 
Charles Lamb one of the wholesomest of writers. 

As to the plan on which the selections for this volume 
have been made, it needs only to be said that, in gen- 
eral, the editor has aimed to include those letters which 
exhibit most fully the writer's distinctive charm and 
quality. This plan leaves, of course, a residue of consid- 
erable biographical and critical value ; but it is believed 
that to all who really love and appreciate him, Charles 
Lamb's "Best Letters" are those which are most 
uniquely and unmistakably Charles Lamb's. 

E. G. J. 

September, 1891. 



THE BEST LETTERS 



OF 



CHARLES LAMB. 



T. 



TO SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

May 27, 1796. 

Dear Coleridge, — Make yourself perfectly easy 
about May. I paid his bill when I sent your 
clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to 
all the purposes of a single life ; so give yourself 
no further concern about it. The money would 
be superfluous to me if I had it. 

When Southey becomes as modest as his prede- 
cessor, Milton, and publishes his Epics in duode- 
cimo, I will read 'em ; a guinea a book is somewhat 
exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing 
the work. The extracts from it in the " Monthly 
Review," and the short passages in your "Watch- 
man," seem to me much superior to anything in his 
partnership account with Lovell.^ Your poems I 
shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in 

1 Southey had just published his " Joan of Arc," in quarto. 
He and Lovell had published jointly, two years before, 
"Poenis by Bion and Moschus." 



32 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

what you inserted in one of your numbers from 
"Religious Musings," but I thought them elaborate. 
I am somewhat glad you have given up that paper ; 
it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of disso- 
nant mood to your disposition. I wish you success 
in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you 
are employed about the " Evidences of Religion." 
There is need of multiplying such books a hundred- 
fold in this philosophical age, to prevent converts 
to atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to 
meddle with afterwards. . . . 

Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you 
have gone through at Bristol. My life has been 
somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that 
finished last year and began this, your very humble 
servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at Hox- 
ton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't 
bite any one. But mad I was ! and many a vagary 
my imagination played with me, — enough to make 
a volume, if all were told. My sonnets I have ex- 
tended to the number of nine since I saw you, and 
will some day communicate to you. I am beginning 
a poem in blank verse, which, if I finish, I publish. 
White ^ is on the eve of publishing (he took the 
hint from Vortigern) " Original Letters of Falstaff, 
Shallow," etc. ; a copy you shall have when it 
comes out. They are without exception the best 
imitations I ever saw. Coleridge, it may convince 
you of my regards for you when I tell you my 
head ran on you in my madness as much almost 

1 A Christ's Hospital schoolfellow, the " Jem " White of 
the Elia essay, " The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 33 

as on another person, who I am incHned to think 
was the more immediate cause of my temporary 
frenzy. 

The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry ; 
but you will be curious to read it when I tell you 
it was written in my prison-house in one of my 
lucid intervals. 

TO MY SISTER. 

If from my lips some angry accents fell, 

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
'T was but the error of a sickly mind 

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well 
And waters clear of Reason ; and for me 
Let this my verse the poor atonement be, — 
My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined 
Too highly, and with partial eye to see 

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 
Kindest affection ; and wouldst oft-times lend 
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, 
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. 

With these lines, and with that sister's kindest 
remembrances to Cottle, I conclude. 

Yours sincerely, 

Lamb 

II. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

{No month) 1796. 
Tuesday night. — Of your " Watchman," the re- 
view of Burke was the best prose. I augured great 
things from the first number. There is some 

3 



34 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

exquisite poetry interspersed. I have re-read the 
extract from the "Religious Musings," and retract 
whatever invidious there was in my censure of it as 
elaborate. There are times when one is not in 
a disposition thoroughly to relish good writing. I 
have re-read it in a more favorable moment, and 
hesitate not to pronounce it sublime. If there be 
anything in it approaching to tumidity (which I 
meant not to infer; by *< elaborate " I meant simply 
"labored "), it is the gigantic hyperbole by which 
you describe the evils of existing society : " snakes, 
lions, hyenas, and behemoths," is carrying your re- 
sentment beyond bounds. The pictures of "The 
Simoom," of -"Frenzy and Ruin," of "The Whore 
of Babylon," and " The Cry of Foul Spirits disin- 
herited of Earth," and " The Strange Beatitude " 
which the good man shall recognize in heaven, as 
well as the particularizing of the children of wretch- 
edness (I have unconsciously included every part 
of it), form a variety of uniform excellence. I 
hunger and thirst to read the poem complete. 
That is a capital line in your sixth number, — 

" This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month." 

They are exactly such epithets as Burns would have 
stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughed-up 
daisy you seem to have had in mind. Your com- 
plaint that of your readers some thought there was 
too much, some too little, original matter in your . 
numbers, reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the 
"Critic." "Too little incident! Give me leave 
to tell you, sir, there is too much incident." I had 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 35 

like to have forgot thanking you for that exquisite 
little morsel, the first Sclavonian Song. The ex- 
pression in the second, " more happy to be un- 
happy in hell," is it not very quaint? Accept my 
thanks, in common with those of all who love good 
poetry, for ^'The Braes of Yarrow." I congratulate 
you on the enemies you must have made by your 
splendid invective against the barterers in human 
flesh and sinews. Coleridge, you will rejoice to 
hear that Cowper is recovered from his lunacy, and 
is employed on his translation of the Italian, etc., 
poems of Milton for an edition where Fuseli pre- 
sides as designer. Coleridge, to an idler like 
myself, to write and receive letters are both very 
pleasant; but I wish not to break in upon your 
valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently 
from you. Reserve that obligation for your mo- 
ments of lassitude, when you have nothing else to 
do ; for your loco-restive and all your idle propen- 
sities, of course, have given way to the duties of 
providing for a family. The mail is come in, but 
no parcel; yet this is Tuesday. Farewell, then, 
till to-morrow ; for a niche and a nook I must leave 
for criticisms. By the way, I hope you do not send 
your own only copy of ''Joan of Arc; " I will in 
that case return it immediately. 

Your parcel is come ; you have been lavish of 
your presents. 

Wordsworth's poem I have hurried through, not 
without delight. Poor Lovell ! my heart almost 
accuses me for the light manner I lately spoke of 
him, not dreaming of his death. My heart bleeds 



36 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

for your accumulated troubles ; God send you 
through 'em with patience. I conjure you dream 
not that I will ever think of being repaid ; the very 
word is galling to the ears. I have read all your 
"Religious Musings" with uninterrupted feelings 
of profound admiration. You may safely rest your 
fame on it. The best remaining things are what I 
have before read, and they lose nothing by my 
recollection of your manner of rec'ting 'em, for I 
too bear in mind "the voice, the look," of absent 
friends, and can occasionally mimic their manner 
for the amusement of those who have seen 'em. 
Your impassioned manner of recitation I can recall 
at any time to mine own heart and to the ears 
of the bystanders. I rather wish you had left the 
monody on Chatterton concluding, as it did, ab- 
ruptly. It had more of unity. The conclusion 
of your '' Religious Musings," I fear, will entitle you 
to the reproof of your beloved woman, who wisely 
will not suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you 
walk humbly with your God. The very last words, " I 
exercise my young novitiate thought in ministeries 
of heart-stirring song," though not now new to me, 
cannot be enough admired. To speak politely, they 
are a well-turned compliment to poetry. I hasten 
to read ''Joan of Arc," etc. I have read your lines 
at the beginning of second book ; ^ they are worthy 
of Milton, but in my mind yield to your " Religious 
Musings." I shall read the whole carefully, and 
in some future letter take the hberty to particularize 

1 Coleridge contributed some four hundred lines to the 
second book of Southey's epic. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 37 

my opinions of it. Of what is new to me among 
your poems next to the ^^ Musings," that beginning 
" My Pensive Sara " gave me most pleasure. The 
lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite ; they 
made my sister and self smile, as conveying a 
pleasing picture of Mrs. C. checking your wild 
wanderings, which we were so fond of hearing you 
indulge when among us. It has endeared us more 
than anything to your good lady, and your own self- 
reproof that follows delighted us. 'T is a charming 
poem throughout (you have well remarked that 
charming, admirable, exquisite are the words ex- 
pressive of feelings more than conveying of ideas, 
else I might plead very well want of room in my 
paper as excuse for generalizing). I want room 
to tell you how we are charmed with your verses in 
the manner of Spenser, etc. I am glad you resume 
the " Watchman." Change the name ; leave out 
all articles of news, and whatever things are pecu- 
liar to newspapers, and confine yourself to ethics, 
verse, criticism ; or, rather, do not confine your- 
self. Let your plan be as diffuse as the " Specta- 
tor," and I '11 answer for it the work prospers. If 
I am vain enough to think I can be a contributor, 
rely on my inclinations. Coleridge, in reading 
your " Religious Musings," I felt a transient supe- 
riority over you. I have seen Priestley. I love to 
see his name repeated in your writings. I love 
and honor him almost profanely. You would be 
charmed with his Sermons, if you never read 'em. 
You have doubtless read his books illustrative of the 
doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of 



38 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

his in answer to Paine, there is a preface giving an 
account of the man and his services to men, written 
by Lindsey, his dearest friend, well worth your 
reading. 

Tuesday Eve. — Forgive my prolixity, which is yet 
too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you 
comfort, and all that are of your household ! Our 
loves and best good-wishes to Mrs. C. 

C. Lamb. 



III. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

June 10, 1796. 
With "Joan of Arc" I have been delighted, 
amazed. I had not presumed to expect anything of 
such excellence from Southey. Why, the poem is 
alone sufficient to redeem the character of the age 
we live in from the imputation of degenerating in 
poetry, were there no such beings extant as Burns, 

and Bowles, Cowper, and , — fill up the blank 

how you please ; I say nothing. The subject is well 
chosen ; it opens well. To become more particular, 
I will notice in their order a few passages that chiefly 
struck me on perusal. Page 26 : " Fierce and terri- 
ble Benevolence ! " is a phrase full of grandeur and 
originality. The whole context made me feel pos- 
sessed^ even like Joan herself. Page 28 : " It is most 
horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely fibred 
human frame," and what follows, pleased me might- 
ily. In the second book, the first forty lines in par- 
ticular are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed, the 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 39 

whole vision of the Palace of Ambition and what 
follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of the 
Laplander, " By Niemi's lake, or Balda Zhiok, or the 
mossy stone of Solfar-Kapper," ^ will bear compar- 
ison with any in Milton for fulness of circumstance 
and lofty-pacedness of versification. Southey's 
similes, though many of 'em are capital, are all in- 
ferior. In one of his books, the simile of the oak 
in the storm occurs, I think, four times. To return : 
the light in which you view the heathen deities is 
accurate and beautiful. Southey's personifications 
in this book are so many fine and faultless pictures. 
I was much pleased with your manner of accounting 
for the reason why monarchs take delight in war. 
At the 447th line you have placed Prophets and 
Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a footing 
for the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like- 
speaking, it is correct. Page 98 : " Dead is the 
Douglas ! cold thy warrior frame, illustrious Buchan," 
etc., are of kindred excellence with Gray's *' Cold is 
Cadwallo's tongue," etc. How famously the Maid 
baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, 
"with all their trumpery!" Page 126: the pro- 
cession, the appearances of the Maid, of the Bastard 
Son of Orleans, and 01 Tremouille, are full of fire 
and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. 
The personifications from line 303 to 309, in the 
heat of the battle, had better been omitted ; they 
are not very striking, and only encumber. The 
converse which Joan and Conrade hold on the banks 

1 Lapland mountains. From Coleridge's "Destiny of 
Nations." 



40 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

of the Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313 : 
the conjecture that in dreams " all things are that 
seem," is one of those conceits which the poet de- 
lights to admit into his creed, — a creed, by the way, 
more marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius 
dreamed of. Page 315 : I need only mention those 
lines ending with " She saw a serpent gnawing at 
her heart ! " They are good imitative lines : " he 
toiled and toiled, of toil to reap no end, but endless 
toil and never-ending woe." Page 347 : Cruelty is 
such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 
361 : all the passage about Love (where he seems to 
confound conjugal love with creating and preserving 
love) is very confused, and sickens me with a load 
of useless personifications ; else that ninth book is 
the finest in the volume, — an exquisite combination 
of the ludicrous and the terrible. I have never read 
either, even in translation, but such I conceive to 
be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. The tenth 
book is the most languid. 

On the whole, considering the celerity wherewith 
the poem was finished, I was astonished at the 
unfrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find 
it verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in battle, 
Dunois perhaps the same ; Conrade too much. The 
anecdotes interspersed among the battles refresh the 
mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the 
very many passages of simple pathos abounding 
throughout the poem, — passages which the author of 
" Crazy Kate " might have written. Has not Master 
Southey spoke very slightingly in his preface and 
disparagingly of Cowper's Homer? What makes 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 41 

him reluctant to give Cowper his fame ? And does 
not Sou they use too often the expletives " did " and 
" does " ? They have a good effect at times, but 
are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes 
when they mark a style. On the whole, I expect 
Southey one day to rival Milton; I already deem 
him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living poets 
besides. What says Coleridge ? The " Monody on 
Henderson " is immensely good ; the rest of that little 
volume is readable and above inediocrify} I pro- 
ceed to a more pleasant task, — pleasant because the 
poems are yours ; pleasant because you impose the 
task on me ; and pleasant, let me add, because it 
will confer a whimsical importance on me to sit in 
judgment upon your rhymes. First, though, let me 
thank you again and again, in my own and my 
sister's name, for your invitations. Nothing could 
give us more pleasure than to come ; but (were 
there no other reasons) while my brother's leg is so 
bad, it is out of the question. Poor fellow ! he is 
very feverish and light-headed ; but Cruikshanks has 
pronounced the symptoms favourable, and gives us 
every hope that there will be no need of amputa- 
tion. God send not ! We are necessarily confined 
with him all the afternoon and evening till very late, 
so that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you. 
Thank you for your frequent letters ; you are 
the only correspondent and, I might add, the only 
friend I have in the world. I go nowhere, and 

1 The " Monody" referred to was by Cottle, and appeared 
in a volume of poems published by him at Bristol in 1795. 
Coleridge had forwarded the book to Lamb for his opinion. 



42 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

have no acquaintance. Slow of speech and reserved 
of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society, 
and 1 am left alone. Austin calls only occasionally, 
as though it were a duty rather, and seldom stays 
ten minutes. Then judge how thankful I am for 
your letters ! Do not, however, burden yourself 
with the correspondence. I trouble you again so 
soon only in obedience to your injunctions. Com- 
plaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am 
called away to tea, — thence must wait upon my 
brother ; so must delay till to-morrow. Farewell ! 
— Wednesday. 

Thursday. — I will first notice what is new to me. 
Thirteenth page : " The thrilling tones that concen- 
trate the soul " is a nervous line, and the six first 
lines of page 14 are very pretty, the twenty-first 
effusion a perfect thing. That in the manner of 
Spenser is very sweet, particularly at the close ; the 
thirty-fifth effusion is most exquisite, — that line in 
particular, " And, tranquil, muse upon tranquillity." 
It is the very reflex pleasure that distinguishes the 
tranquillity of a thinking being from that of a shep- 
herd, — a modern one I would be understood to 
mean, — a Damoetas ; one that keeps other people's 
sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from Shur- 
ton Bars has less merit than most things in your 
volume ; personally it may chime in best with your 
own feelings, and therefore you love it best. It 
has, however, great merit. In your fourth epistle 
that is an exquisite paragraph, and fancy-full, of " A 
stream there is which rolls in lazy flow," etc. " Mur- 
murs sweet undersong 'mid jasmin bowers " is a 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 43 

sweet line, and so are the three next. The con- 
cluding simile is far-fetched ; " tempest-honored " 
is a quaintish phrase. 

Yours is a poetical family. I was much surprised 
and pleased to see the signature of Sara to that 
elegant composition, the fifth epistle. I dare not 
criticise the "Religious Musings;" I like not to 
select any part, where all is excellent. I can only 
admire, and thank you for it in the name of a Chris- 
tian, as well as a lover of good poetry; only let me 
ask, is not that thought and those words in Young, 
" stands in the sun," — or is it only such as Young, 
in one of his better moments, might have writ? 

" Believe thou, O my soul, 
Life is a vision shadowy of Truth ; 
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, 
Shapes of a dream ! " 

I thank you for these lines in the name of a neces- 
sarian, and for what follows in next paragraph, in 
the name of a child of fancy. After all, you cannot 
nor ever will write anything with which I shall be so 
delighted as what I have heard yourself repeat. You 
came to town, and I saw you at a time when your 
heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds. Like 
yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed hope ; 

you had 

" Many an holy lay 
That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way." 

I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they 
yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read in 
your little volume your nineteenth effusion, or the 
twenty-eighth or twenty- ninth, or what you call the 



44 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

" Sigh," I think I hear yoit again. I image to my- 
self the Httle smoky room at the " Salutation and 
Cat," where we have sat together through the winter 
nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy. When 
you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart. 
I found myself cut off, at one and the same time, 
from two most dear to me. " How blest with ye 
the path could I have trod of quiet life ! " In your 
conversation you had blended so many pleasant fan- 
cies that they cheated me of my grief; but in your 
absence the tide of melancholy rushed in again, and 
did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason. 
I have recovered, but feel a stupor that makes me 
indiiferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I 
sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of 
mind ; but habits are strong things, and my religious 
fervours are confined, alas ! to some fleeting mo- 
ments of occasional solitary devotion. 

A correspondence, opening with you, has roused 
me a little from my lethargy and made me conscious 
of existence. Indulge me in it ; I will not be very 
troublesome ! At some future time I will amuse 
you with an account, as full as my memory will per- 
mit, of the strange turn my frenzy took. I look 
back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy ; 
for while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure 
happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted 
all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have 
gone mad ! All now seems to me vapid, — compar- 
atively so. Excuse this selfish digression. Your 
"Monody"^ is so superlatively excellent that I can 

1 The Monody on Chatterton. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 45 

only wish it perfect, which I can't help feeling it is 
not quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures ; what 
I am going to propose would make it more com- 
pressed and, I think, more energetic, though, I am 
sensible, at the expense of many beautiful lines. 
Let it begin, '' Is this the land of song-ennobled 
line? " and proceed to " Otway's famished form ; " 
then, '' Thee, Chatterton," to " blaze of Seraphim ; " 
then, "clad in Nature's rich array," to "orient 
day ; " then, " but soon the scathing lightning," to 
"blighted land;" then, "sublime of thought," to 
" his bosom glows ; " then 

" But soon upon his poor unsheltered head 
Did Penury her sickly mildew shed; 
Ah ! where are fled the charms of vernal grace, 
And joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er his face." 

Then "youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh," as 
before. The rest may all stand down to " gaze upon 
the waves below." What follows now may come 
next as detached verses, suggested by the " Mon- 
ody," rather than a part of it. They are, indeed, 
in themselves, very sweet ; 

" And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng, 
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song ! " 

in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you may 
understand me by counting lines. I have proposed 
omitting twenty-four lines; I feel that thus com- 
pressed it would gain energy, but think it most 
likely you will not agree with me ; for who shall go 
about to bring opinions to the bed of Procrustes, 
and introduce among the sons of men a monotony 



46 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

of identical feelings ? I only propose with diffidence. 
Reject you, if you please, with as little remorse as 
you would the color of a coat or the pattern of a 
buckle, where our fancies differed. 

The " Pixies " is a perfect thing, and so are the 
" Lines on the Spring," page 28. The " Epitaph 
on an Infant," like a Jack-o'-lantern, has danced 
about (or like Dr. Forster's-"- scholars) out of the 
*' Morning Chronicle" into the "Watchman," and 
thence back into your collection. It is very pretty, 
and you seem to think so, but, may be, o'erlooked 
its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page. I 
had once deemed sonnets of unrivalled use that way, 
but your Epitaphs, I find, are the more diffuse. 
" Edmund " still holds its place among your best 
verses. "Ah ! fair delights " to "roses round," in 
your poem called "Absence," recall (none more 
forcibly) to my mind the tones in which yott recited 
it. I will not notice, in this tedious (to you) man- 
ner, verses which have been so long delighful to me, 
and which you already know my opinion of. Of 
this kind are Bowles, Priestley, and that most exqui- 
site and most Bowles-like of all, the nineteenth effu- 
sion. It would have better ended with " agony of 
care; " the last two lines are obvious and unneces- 
sary ; and you need not now make fourteen lines of 
it, now it is rechristened from a Sonnet to an 
Effusion. 

Schiller might have written the twentieth effu- 
sion ; 't is worthy of him in any sense. I was glad 
to meet with those lines you sent me when my 

1 Dr. Faustus's. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 47 

sister was so ill ; I had lost the copy, and I felt 
not a little proud at seeing my name in your verse. 
The " Complaint of Ninathoma" (first stanza in par- 
ticular) is the best, or only good, imitation of 
Ossian I ever saw, your " Restless Gale " excepted. 
"To an Infant" is most sweet; is not " foodful," 
though, very harsh? Would not "dulcet" fruit 
be less harsh, or some other friendly bi- syllable? 
In " Edmund," "Frenzy ! fierce-eyed child " is not 
so well as " frantic," though that is an epithet add- 
ing nothing to the meaning. Slander couching was 
better than "squatting." In the " Man of Ross" 
it was a better line thus, — 

" If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheered moments pass," 

than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can 
reconcile me to the concluding five lines of " Kos- 
ciusko ; " call it anything you will but sublime. 
In my twelfth effusion I had rather have seen what 
I wrote myself, though they bear no comparison 
with your exquisite lines, — 

" On rose-leaf d beds amid your faery bowers," etc. 
I love my sonnets because they are the reflected 
images of my own feelings at different times. To 
instance, in the thirteenth, — 

" How reason reeled," etc., 
are good lines, but must spoil the whole with me, 
who know it is only a fiction of yours, and that the 
" rude dashings " did in fact not " rock me to 
repose." I grant the same objection applies not 
to the former sonnet ; but still I love my own feel- 
ings, — they are dear to memory, though they now 



48 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

and then wake a sigh or a tear. "Thinking on 
divers things fordone," I charge you, Coleridge, 
spare my ewe-lambs ; and though a gentleman may 
borrow six lines in an epic poem (I should have 
no objection to borrow five hundred, and without 
acknowledging), still, in a sonnet, a personal poem, 
I do not " ask my friend the aiding verse ; " I 
would not wrong your feelings by proposing any 
improvements (did I think myself capable of sug- 
gesting 'em) in such personal poems as "Thou 
bleedest, my poor heart," — 'od so, — I am caught, 
— I have already done it ; but that simile I propose 
abridging would not change the feeling or introduce 
any alien ones. Do you understand me ? In the 
twenty-eighth, however, and in the "Sigh," and 
that composed at Clevedon, things that come from 
the heart direct, not by the medium of the fancy, 
I would not suggest an alteration. 

When my blank verse is finished, or any long 
fancy poem, " propino tibi alterandum, cut-up- 
andum, abridgeandum," just what you will with it; 
but spare my ewe-lambs ! That to " Mrs. Siddons," 
now, you were welcome to improve, if it had been 
worth it ; but I say unto you again, Coleridge, spare 
my ewe-lambs ! I must confess, were they mine, 
I should omit, in editione seamda, effusions two and 
three, because satiric and below the dignity of the 
poet of " Religious Musings," fifth, seventh, half 
of the eighth, that "Written in early youth," as far 
as "thousand eyes," — though I part not unreluc- 
tantly with that lively line, — 

"Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes," 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 49 

and one or two just thereabouts. But I would sub- 
stitute for it that sweet poem called " Recollection," 
in the fifth number of the " Watchman," better, 
I think, than the remainder of this poem, though 
not differing materially; as the poem now stands, 
it looks altogether confused. And do not omit those 
lines upon the " Early Blossom " in your sixth num- 
ber of the "Watchman;" and I would omit the 
tenth effusion, or what would do better, alter and 
improve the last four lines. In fact, I suppose, 
if they were mine, I should not omit 'em ; but your 
verse is, for the most part, so exquisite that I 
like not to see aught of meaner matter mixed with 
it. Forgive my petulance and often, I fear, ill- 
founded criticisms, and forgive me that I have, 
by this time, made your eyes and head ache with 
my long letter; but I cannot forego hastily the 
pleasure and pride of thus conversing with you. 
You did not tell me whether I was to include the 
" Condones ad Populum " in my remarks on your 
poems. They are not unfrequently sublime, and 
I think you could not do better than to turn 'em 
into verse, — if you have nothing else to do. Aus- 
tin, I am sorry to say, is a confirmed atheist. Stod- 
dart, a cold-hearted, well-bred, conceited disciple of 
Godwin, does him no good. His wife has several 
daughters (one of 'em as old as himself) . Surely 
there is something unnatural in such a marriage. 

How I sympathize with you on the dull duty of 
a reviewer, and heartily damn with you Ned Evans 
and the Prosodist ! I shall, however, wait impa- 
tiently for the articles in the " Critical Review " 

4 



50 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

next month, because they are yours. Young Evans 
(W. Evans, a branch of a family you were once 
so mtimate with) is come into our office, and sends 
his love to you. Coleridge, I devoutly wish that 
Fortune, who has made sport with you so long, may 
play one freak more, throw you into London or 
some spot near it, and there snug-ify you for life. 
'T is a selfish but natural wish for me, cast as I am 
" on life's wide plain, friendless." Are you ac- 
quainted with Bowles.? I see by his last Elegy (writ- 
ten at Bath) you are near neighbors. — Thursday. 

"And I can think I can see the groves again; " 
"Was it the voice of thee ; " " Turns not the voice 
of thee, my buried friend; " "Who dries with her 
dark locks the tender tear," — are touches as true 
to Nature as any in his other Elegy, written at the 
Hot Wells, about poor Kassell, etc. You are doubt- 
less acquainted with it. 

I do not know that I entirely agree with you in 
your stricture upon my sonnet "To Innocence." 
To men whose hearts are not quite deadened by 
their commerce with the world, innocence (no 
longer familiar) becomes an awful idea. So I felt 
when I wrote it. Your other censures (qualified 
and sweetened, though, with praises somewhat ex- 
travagant) I perfectly coincide with; yet I choose 
to retain the word "lunar," — indulge a "lunatic" 
in his loyalty to his mistress the moon ! I have just 
been reading a most pathetic copy of verses on 
Sophia Pringle, who was hanged and burned for coin- 
ing. One of the strokes of pathos (which are very 
many, all somewhat obscure) is, " She lifted up her 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 51 

guilty forger to heaven." A note explains, by '^ for- 
ger," her right hand, with which she forged or coined 
the base metal. For " pathos " read " bathos." You 
have put me out of conceit with my blank verse by 
your " Religious Musings." I think it will come to 
nothing. I do not like 'em enough to send 'em. I 
have just been reading a book, which I may be too 
partial to, as it was the delight of my childhood ; but 
I will recommend it to you, — it is Izaak Walton's 
" Complete Angler." All the scientific part you may 
omit in reading. The dialogue is very simple, full of 
pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty 
old verses are interspersed. This letter, which would 
be a week's work reading only, I do not wish you to 
answer in less than a month. I shall be richly con- 
tent with a letter from you some day early in July ; 
though, if you get anyhow settled before then, pray 
let me know it immediately ; 't would give me much 
satisfaction. Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the 
salary is the only scruple that the most rigid moral- 
ist would admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage, 
is not the salary low, and absence from your family 
unavoidable? London is the only fostering soil for 
genius. Nothing more occurs just now; so I will 
leave you, in mercy, one small white spot empty 
below, to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they 
must be with the wilderness of words they have by 
this time painfully travelled through. God love you, 
Coleridge, and prosper you through life ! though 
mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at Bristol, 
or at Nottingham, or anywhere but London. Our 
loves to Mrs. C . C. L. 



52 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

IV. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

June 14, 1796. 
I AM not quite satisfied now with the Chatterton,^ 
and with your leave will try my hand at it again. A 
master-joiner, you know, may leave a cabinet to be 
finished, when his own hands are full. To your list of 
illustrative personifications, into which a fine imagi- 
nation enters, I will take leave to add the following 
from Beaumont and Fletcher's " Wife for a Month ; " 
't is the conclusion of a description of a sea-fight : 
" The game of death was never played so nobly ; the 
meagre thief grew wanton in his mischiefs, and his 
shrunk, hollow eyes smiled on his ruins." There is 
fancy in these of a lower order from " Bonduca " : 
" Then did I see these valiant men of Britain, like 
boding owls creep into tods of ivy, and hoot their 
fears to one another nightly." Not that it is a per- 
sonification, only it just caught my eye in a httle 
extract-book I keep, which is full of quotations from 
B. and F. in particular, in which authors I can't help 
thinking there is a greater richness of poetical fancy 
than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are you 
acquainted with Massinger? At a hazard I will 
trouble you with a passage from a play of his called 
" A Very Woman." The lines are spoken by a lover 
(disguised) to his faithless mistress. You will re- 
mark the fine effect of the double endings. You 

1 Coleridge's "Monody" on Chatterton. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 53 

will by your ear distinguish the lines, for I write 'em 
as prose. " Not far from where my father lives, a 
lady, a neighbor by, blest with as great a beattty as 
Nature durst bestow without undoing, dwelt, and 
most happily, as I thought then, and blest the 
house a thousand times she dwelt in. This beauty, 
in the blossom of my youth, when my first fire knew 
no adulterate incense, nor I no way to flatter but my 
fondness ; in all the bravery my friends could show 
me, in all the faith my innocence could give me, in 
the best language my true tongue could tell me, and 
all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued 
and served ; long did I serve this lady, long was my 
travail, long my trade to win her ; with all the duty 
of my soul I served her." "Then she must love." 
" She did, but never me : she could not love me ; 
she would not love, she hated, — more, she scorn'd 
me ; and in so a poor and base a way abused me for 
all my services, for all my bounties, so bold neglects 
flung on me." " What out of love, and worthy love, 
I gave her (shame to her most unworthy mind !), 
to fools, to girls, to fiddlers and her boys she flung, 
all in disdain of me." One more passage strikes 
my eye from B. and F.'s " Palamon and Arcite." 
One of 'em complains in prison : " This is all our 
world ; we shall know nothing here but one another, 
hear nothing but the clock that tells us our woes ; 
the vine shall grow, but we shall never see it," etc. 
Is not the last circumstance exquisite? I mean not 
to lay myself open by saying they exceed Milton, 
and perhaps Collins in sublimity. But don't you 
conceive all poets after Shakspeare yield to 'em in 



54 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

variety of genius ? Massinger treads close on their 
heels ; but you are most probably as well acquainted 
with his writings as your humble servant. My quo- 
tations, in that case, will only serve to expose my 
barrenness of matter. Southey in simplicity and 
tenderness is excelled decidedly only, I think, by 
Beaumont and F. in his " Maid's Tragedy," and 
some parts of •' Philaster " in particular, and else- 
where occasionally ; and perhaps by Cowper in his 
" Crazy Kate," and in parts of his translation, such 
as the speeches of Hecuba and Andromache. I 
long to know your opinion of that translation. The 
Odyssey especially is surely very Homeric. What 
nobler than the appearance of Phoebus at the begin- 
ning of the Iliad, — the lines ending with " Dread 
sounding, bounding on the silver bow ! " 

I beg you will give me your opinion of the trans- 
lation ; it afforded me high pleasure. As curious a 
specimen of translation as ever fell into my hands, 
is a young man's in our office, of a French novel. 
What in the original was literally " amiable delusions 
of the fancy," he proposed to render " the fair frauds 
of the imagination." I had much trouble in Hcking 
the book into any meaning at all. Yet did the 
knave clear fifty or sixty pounds by subscription 
and selling the copyright. The book itself not a 
week's work ! To-day's portion of my journalizing 
epistle has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I 

will here end. 

Tuesday night. 

I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oro- 

nooko (associated circumstances, which ever forci- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 55 

bly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at 
the "Salutation"). My eyes and brain are heavy 
and asleep, but my heart is awake ; and if words 
came as ready as ideas, and ideas as feelings, I 
could say ten hundred kind things. Coleridge, you 
know not my supreme happiness at having one 
on earth (though counties separate us) whom I can 
call a friend. Remember you those tender lines 
of Logan ? — 

" Our broken friendships we deplore, 
And loves of youth that are no more ; 
No after friendships e'er can raise 
Th' endearments of our early days, 
And ne'er the heart such fondness prove, 
As when we first began to love." 

I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, what you 
may not equally understand, as you will be sober 
when you read it ; but my sober and my half-tipsy 
hours you are alike a sharer in. Good night. 

" Then up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink, 
Craigdoroch, thou 'It soar when creation shall sink." 

Burns. 



V. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

September 27, 1796. 
My dearest Friend, — White, or some of my 
friends, or the public papers, by this time may have 
informed you of the terrible calamities that have 
fallen on our family. I will only give you the out- 
lines : My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of 



56 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

insanity, has been the death of her own mother. 
I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife 
out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, 
from whence I fear she must be moved to an hos- 
pital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat, 
and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I 
believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly 
wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my 
aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue-coat School, has been 
very kind to us, and we have no other friend ; but, 
thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able 
to do the best that remains to do. Write as reli- 
gious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is 
gone and done with. With me " the former things 
are passed away," and I have something more to do 
than to feel. 

God Almighty have us all in his keeping ! 

C. Lamb. 

Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed 
every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as 
you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give 
free leave) without name or initial, and never send 
me a book, I charge you. 

Your own judgment will convince you not to take 
any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look 
after your family ; I have my reason and strength 
left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think 
of coming to see me. Write. I will not see you, if 
you come. God Almighty love you an(f all of us ! 

C. Lamb. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 57 

VI. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

October 3, 1796. 
My dearest Friend, — Your letter was an inesti- 
mable treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, 
I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat 
brighter. My poor dear, dearest sister, the unhappy 
and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judg- 
ments on our house, is restored to her senses, to a 
dreadful sense and recollection of what has past, 
awful to her mind and impressive (as it must be to 
the end of life), but tempered with religious resigna- 
tion and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which 
in this early stage knows how to distinguish between 
a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and 
the terrible guilt of a mother's murder. I have seen 
her. I found her, this morning, calm and serene ; 
far, very, very far, from an indecent, forgetful serenity. 
She has a most affectionate and tender concern for 
what has happened. Indeed, from the beginning, 
frightful and hopeless as her disorder seemed, I had 
confidence enough in her strength of mind and reli- 
gious principle to look forward to a time when even 
she might recover tranquillity. God be praised, 
Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never 
once been otherwise than collected and calm ; even 
on the dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible 
scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders 
may have construed into indifference, — a tranquil- 



58 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

lity not of despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say 
that it was a religious principle that most supported 
me ? I allow much to other favorable circumstances. 
I felt that I had something else to do than to regret. 
On that first evening my aunt was lying insensible, 
to all appearance like one dying; my father with 
his poor forehead plastered over, from a wound he 
had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, 
and who loved him no less dearly ; my mother a dead 
and murdered corpse in the next room, — yet was 
I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes in 
sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without 
despair. I have lost no sleep since. I had been 
long used not to rest in things of sense, — had en- 
deavored after a comprehension of mind unsatisfied 
with the " ignorant present time ; " and this kept 
me up. I had the whole weight of the family thrown 
on me ; for my brother,^ little disposed (I speak 
not without tenderness for him) at any time to take 
care of old age and infirmities, had now, with his bad 
leg, an exemption from such duties ; and I was now 
left alone. 

One little incident may serve to make you under- 
stand my way of managing my mind. Within a day 
or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a 
tongue which we had had salted for some weeks in 
the house. As I sat down, a feeling like remorse 
struck me : this tongue poor Mary got for me, 
and can I partake of it now, when she is far away? 
A thought occurred and relieved me : if I give in 

' John Lamb, the "James Elia " of the essay " My Rela- 
tions." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 59 

to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, 
an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the 
keenest griefs ; I must rise above such weaknesses. 
I hope this was not want of true feehng. I did not 
let this carry me, though, too far. On the very 
second day (I date from the day of horrors), as is 
usual in such cases, there were a matter of twenty 
people, I do think, supping in our room ; they pre- 
vailed on me to eat with the^n (for to eat I never 
refused). They were all making merry in the room ! 
Some had come from friendship, some from busy 
curiosity, and some from interest. I was going to 
partake with them, when my recollection came that 
my poor dead mother was lying in the next room, — 
the very next room ; a mother who through life 
wished nothing but her children's welfare. Indigna- 
tion, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed 
upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my 
way mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell on 
my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgive- 
ness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting 
her so soon. TranquilUty returned, and it was the 
only violent emotion that mastered me ; and I think 
it did me good. 

I mention these things because I hate conceal- 
ment, and love to give a faithful journal of what 
passes within me. Our friends have been very 
good. Sam Le Grice,^ who was then in town, was 
with me the three or four first days, and was as 
a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time, 
to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in 

1 A Christ's Hospital schoolfellow. 



6o LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

constant attendance and humoring my poor father ; 
talked with him, read to him, played at cribbage 
with him (for so short is the old man's recollection 
that he was playing at cards, as though nothing had 
happened, while the coroner's inquest was sitting 
over the way ! ) . Samuel wept tenderly when he 
went away, for his mother wrote him a very severe 
letter on his loitering so long in town, and he was 
forced to go. Mr. Norris, of Christ's Hospital, has 
been as a father to me, Mrs. Norris as a mother, 
though we had few claims on them. A gentleman, 
brother to my god- mother, from whom we never 
had right or reason to expect any such assistance, 
sent my father twenty pounds; and to crown all 
these God's blessings to our family at such a time, 
an old lady, a cousin of my father and aunt's, a 
gentlewoman of fortune, is to take my aunt and 
make her comfortable for the short remainder of 
her days. My aunt is recovered, and as well as 
ever, and highly pleased at thoughts of going, and 
has generously given up the interest of her little 
money (which was formerly paid my father for her 
board) wholely and solely to my sister's use. 
Reckoning this, we have. Daddy and I, for our 
two selves and an old maid-servant to look after 
him when I am out, which will be necessary, ;£i7o, 
or ;^i8o rather, a year, out of which we can spare 
£,^0 or ^60 at least for Mary while she stays at 
Islington, where she must and shall stay during her 
father's life, for his and her comfort. I know John 
will make speeches about it, but she shall not go 
into an hospital. The good lady of the madhouse 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 6i 

and her daughter, an elegant, sweet-behaved young 
lady, love her, and are taken with her amazingly ; 
and I know from her own mouth she loves them, 
and longs to be with them as much. Poor thing, 
they say she was but the other morning saying she 
knew she must go to Bethlem for life; that one 
of her brothers would have it so, but the other 
would wish it not, but be obliged to go with the 
stream ; that she had often, as she passed Bethlem, 
thought it likely, " here it may be my fate to end 
my days," conscious of a certain flightiness in her 
poor head oftentimes, and mindful of more than 
one severe illness of that nature before. A legacy 
of ^loo which my father will have at Christmas, 
and this £20 \ mentioned before, with what is in 
the house, will much more than set us clear. If 
my father, an old servant-maid, and I can't live, and 
live comfortably, on ^130 or ^120 a year, we 
ought to burn by slow fires ; and I almost would, 
that Mary might not go into an hospital. 

Let me not leave one unfavorable impression on 
your mind respecting my brother. Since this has 
happened, he has been very kind and brotherly; 
but I fear for his mind. He has taken his ease 
in the world, and is not fit himself to struggle with 
difficulties, nor has much accustomed himself to 
throw himself into their way ; and I know his lan- 
guage is already, " Charles, you must take care of 
yourself, you must not abridge yourself of a single 
pleasure you have been used to," etc., and in 
that style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can 
respect a diiference of mind, and love what is ami- 



62 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

able in a character not perfect. He has been very 
good, but I fear for his mind. Thank God, I 
can unconnect myself with him, and shall manage 
all my father's moneys in future myself, if I take 
charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even 
hinted a wish, at any future time even, to share 
with me. The lady at this madhouse assures me 
that I may dismiss immediately both doctor and 
apothecary, retaining occasionally a composing 
draught or so for a while ; and there is a less ex- 
pensive establishment in her house, where she will 
only not have a room and nurse to herself, for JP^^o 
or guineas a year, — the outside would be ^60. 
You know, by economy, how much more even I 
shall be able to spare for her comforts. She will, I 
fancy, if she stays, make one of the family rather 
than of the patients ; and the old and young ladies I 
like exceedingly, and she loves dearly ; and they, 
as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily, 
if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister 
should love her. 

Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my 
poor sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the 
least tincture of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her 
qualities, poor dear, dearest soul, in a future let- 
ter, for my own comfort, for I understand her 
thoroughly ; and if I mistake not, in the most try- 
ing situation that a human being can be found in, 
she will be found (I speak not with sufficient humil- 
ity, I fear, but humanly and foolishly speaking) , — 
she will be found, I trust, uniformly great and ami- 
able. God keep her in her present mind, to whom 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. (i2> 

be thanks and praise for all His dispensations to 
mankind ! 

C. Lamb. 

These mentioned good fortunes and change of 
prospects had almost brought my mind over to the 
extreme the very opposite to despair. I was in 
danger of making myself too happy. Your letter 
brought me back to a view of things which I had 
entertained from the beginning. I hope (for Mary 
I can answer) — but I hope that / shall through life 
never have less recollection, nor a fainter impres- 
sion, of what has happened than I have now. 'T is 
not a light thing, nor meant by the Almighty to be 
received lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, 
and deeply religious through life ; and by such 
means may both of us escape madness in future, if 
it so please the Almighty ! 

Send me word how it fares with Sara. I repeat 
it, your letter was, and will be, an inestimable treas- 
ure to me. You have a view of what my situation 
demands of me, like my own view, and I trust a just 
one. 

Coleridge, continue to write, but do not forever 
offend me by talking of sending me cash. Sin- 
cerely and on my soul, we do not want it. God 
love you both ! 

I will write again very soon. Do you write 
directly. 



64 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

VII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

October 17, 1796. 

My dearest Friend, — I grieve from my very soul 
to observe you in your plans of life veering about 
from this hope to the other, and settling nowhere. 
Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that 
does this for you, — a stubborn, irresistible concur- 
rence of events, — or hes the fault, as I fear it does, 
in your own mind? You seem to be taking up 
splendid schemes of fortune only to lay them down 
again ; and your fortunes are an ignis fatuus that has 
been conducting you in thought from Lancaster 
Court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock; then 
jumping across to Dr. Somebody's, whose son's tutor 
you were likely to be ; and would to God the dan- 
cing demon may conduct you at last in peace and 
comfort to the " life and labours of a cottager " ! 
You see from the above awkward playfulness of 
fancy that my spirits are not quite depressed. I 
should ill deserve God's blessings, which, since the 
late terrible event, have come down in mercy upon 
us, if I indulge in regret or querulousness. Mary 
continues serene and cheerful. I have not by me a 
little letter she wrote to me ; for though I see her 
almost every day, yet we delight to write to one an- 
other, for we can scarce see each other but in com- 
pany with some of the people of the house. I have 
not the letter by me, but will quote from memory 
what she wrote in it : "I have no bad, terrifying 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 65 

dreams. At midnight, when I happen to awake, the 
nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of 
the poor mad people around me, I have no fear. 
The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile 
upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and rea- 
son which the Almighty has given me. I shall see 
her again in heaven ; she will then understand me 
better. My grandmother, too, will understand me 
better, and will then say no more, as she used to do, 
'Polly, what are those poor crazy, moythered brains of 
yours thinking of always ? ' " Poor Mary ! my mother 
indeed never understood her right. She loved her, as 
she loved us all, with a mother's love ; but in opinion, 
in feeling and sentiment and disposition, bore so dis- 
tant a resemblance to her daughter that she never 
understood her right, — never could believe how 
much she loved her, but met her caresses, her protes- 
tations of filial affection, too frequently with coldness 
and repulse. Still, she was a good mother. God 
forbid I should think of her but most respectfully, 
most affectionately. Yet she would always love my 
brother above Mary, who was not worthy of one tenth 
of that affection which Mary had a right to claim. 
But it is my sister's gratifying recollection that 
every act of duty and of love she could pay, every 
kindness (and I speak true, when I say to the hurt- 
ing of her health, and most probably in great part 
to the derangement of her senses) through a long 
course of infirmities and sickness she could show 
her, she ever did. I will some day, as I promised, 
enlarge to you upon my sister's excellences ; 't will 
seem like exaggeration, but I will do it. At present, 

5 



66 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

short letters suit my state of mind best. So take my 
kindest wishes for your comfort and estabhshment 
in Hfe, and for Sara's welfare and comforts with you. 
God love you ; God love us all ! 

C. Lamb. 

VIII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

November 14, 1796. 
Coleridge, I love you for dedicating your poetry 
to Bowles.-^ Genius of the sacred fountain of tears, 
it was he who led you gently by the hand through 
all this valley of weeping, showed you the dark green 
yew-trees and the willow shades where, by the fall of 
waters, you might indulge in uncomplaining melan- 
choly, a delicious regret for the past, or weave fine 
visions of that awful future, — 

" When all the vanities of life's brief day 
Oblivion's hurrying hand hath swept away, 
And all its sorrows, at the awful blast 
Of the archangel's trump, are but as shadows past." 

I have another sort of dedication in my head for 
my few things, which I want to know if you approve 
of and can insert.^ I mean to inscribe them to my 
sister. It will be unexpected, and it will give her 
pleasure ; or do you think it will look whimsical 

1 The earliest sonnets of William Lisle Bowles were pub- 
lished in 1789, the year of Lamb's removal from Christ's 
Hospital. 

2 Alluding to the prospective joint volume of poems (by 
Coleridge, Lamb, and Charles Lloyd) to be published by Cottle 
in 1797. This was Lamb's second serious literary venture, he 
and Coleridge having issued a joint volume in 1796. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 67 

at all ? As I have not spoke to her about it, I can 
easily reject the idea. But there is a monotony in 
the affections which people living together, or as we 
do now, very frequently seeing each other, are apt to 
give in to, — a sort of indifference in the expression 
of kindness for each other, which demands that we 
should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of sur- 
prise. Do you pubUsh with Lloyd, or without him ? 
In either case my little portion may come last, and 
after the fashion of orders to a country correspon- 
dent, I will give directions how I should like to have 
'em done. The tide-page to stand thus : — 

POEMS 

BY 
CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE. 

Under this tide the following motto, which, for 
want of room, I put over- leaf, and desire you to 
insert whether you like it or no. May not a gen- 
tleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial 
bearings the herald will give him leave, without 
consulting his republican friend, who might advise 
none ? May not a publican put up the sign of the 
Saracen's Head, even though his undiscerning 
neighbor should prefer, as more genteel, the Cat 

and Gridiron? 

[Motto.] 

"This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, 
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense. 
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, 
In the best language my true tongue could tell me, 
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, 
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady.''^ 

Massinger. 
^ From " A Verv Woman." 



68 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

THE DEDICATION. 



THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS, 
CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING 

IN life's more vacant hours, 

PRODUCED, for THE MOST PART, BY 

LOVE IN IDLENESS, 

ARE, 

WITH ALL A brother's FONDNESS, 

INSCRIBED TO 

MARY ANN LAMB, 

THE author's BEST FRIEND AND SISTER. 

This is the pomp and paraphernaHa of parting, 
with which I take my leave of a passion which has 
reigned so royally (so long) within me ; thus, with 
its trappings of laureateship, I fling it off, pleased 
and satisfied with myself that the weakness troubles 
me no longer. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the 
•fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. Oh, 
my friend, I think sometimes, could I recall the 
days that are past, which among them should I 
choose? Not those '' merrier days," not the " plea- 
sant days of hope," not " those wanderings with a 
fair-hair'd maid," ^ which I have so often and so 
feehngly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a 
mother's fondness for her schoolboy. What would 
I give to call her back to earth for one day, on 
my knees to ask her pardon for all those little 
asperities of temper which from time to time have 

1 An allusion to Lamb's first love, — the "Anna" of his 
sonnets, and the original, probably, of " Rosamund Gray " 

and of " Alice W n " in the beautiful essay " Dream 

Children." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 69 

given her gentle spirit pain. And the day, my 
friend, I trust will come ; there will be " time 
enough " for kind offices of love, if " Heaven's 
eternal year " be ours. Hereafter, her meek spirit 
shall not reproach me. Oh, my friend, cultivate 
the filial feehngs, and let no man think himself 
released from the kind " charities " of relationship. 
These shall give him peace at the last ; these are 
the best foundation for every species of benevo- 
lence. I rejoice to hear, by certain channels, that 
you, my friend, are reconciled with all your rela- 
tions. 'T is the most kindly and natural species 
of love, and we have all the associated train of early 
feelings to secure its strength and perpetuity. Send 
me an account of your health ; indeed I am solicit- 
ous about you. God love you and yours ! 

C. Lamb. 

IX. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

[Fragment] 

Dec. 5, 1796. 

At length I have done with verse-making, — not 
that I reUsh other people's poetry less : theirs comes 
from 'em without effort ; mine is the difficult opera- 
tion of a brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult 
by disuse. I hs^e been reading " The Task " with 
fresh delight. I am glad you love Cowper. I 
could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton ; but 
I would not call that man my friend who should be 
offended with the " divine chit-chat of Cowper." 
Write to me. God love you and yours ! 

C. L. 



70 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

X. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

Dec. lo, 1796. 
I HAD put my letter into the post rather hastily, 
not expecting to have to acknowledge another from 
you so soon. This morning's present has made me 
alive again. My last night's epistle was childishly 
querulous ; but you have put a little life into me, 
and I will thank you for your remembrance of me, 
while my sense of it is yet warm j for if I linger a 
day or two, I may use the same phrase of acknowl- 
edgment, or similar, but the feeling that dictates it 
now will be gone ; I shall send you a caput mor- 
tumn, not a cor vivens. Thy "Watchman's," thy 
bellman's verses, I do retort upon thee, thou libel- 
lous varlet, — why, you cried the hours yourself, 
and who made you so proud? But I submit, to 
show my humility, most implicitly to your dogmas. 
I reject entirely the copy of verses you reject. 
With regard to my leaving off versifying,^ you have 
said so many pretty things, so many fine compli- 
ments, ingeniously decked out in the garb of sin- 
cerity, and undoubtedly springing from a present 
feeling somewhat like sincerity, that you might melt 
the most un-muse-ical soul, did you not (now for a 
Rowland compliment for your profusion of Olivers), 
— did you not in your very epistle, by the many 
pretty fancies and profusion of heart displayed in 

1 See preceding letter. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 71 

it, dissuade and discourage me from attempting 
anything after you. At present I have not leisure 
to make verses, nor anything approaching to a 
fondness for the exercise. In the ignorant present 
time, who can answer for the future man? "At 
lovers' perjuries Jove laughs," — and poets have 
sometimes a disingenuous way of forswearing their 
occupation. This, though, is not my case. The 
tender cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and 
subsiding recollections, is favorable to the Sonnet 
or the Elegy ; but from — 

** The sainted growing woof 
The teasing troubles keep aloof." 

The music of poesy may charm for a while the im- 
portunate, teasing cares of life ; but the teased and 
troubled man is not in a disposition to make that 
music. 

You sent me some very sweet lines relative to 
Burns ; but it was at a time when, in my highly agi- 
tated and perhaps distorted state of mind, I thought 
it a duty to read 'em hastily and burn 'em. I 
burned all my own verses, all my book of extracts 
from Beaumont and Fletcher and a thousand 
sources ; I burned a little journal of my foolish pas- 
sion which I had a long time kept, — 

" Noting, ere they past away, 
The little lines of yesterday." 

I almost burned all your letters ; I did as bad, — I 
lent 'em to a friend to keep out of my brother's 
sight, should he come and make inquisition into our 
papers ; for much as he dwelt upon your conversation 



72 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

while you were among us, and delighted to be with 
you, it has been his fashion ever since to depreciate 
and cry you down, — you were the cause of my 
madness, you and your damned foolish sensibility 
and melancholy ; and he lamented with a true 
brotherly feeling that we ever met, — even as the sober 
citizen, when his son went astray upon the moun- 
tains of Parnassus, is said to have cursed wit, and 
poetry, and Pope.-^ I quote wrong, but no matter. 
These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way 
for a season ; but I have claimed them in vain, and 
shall not cease to regret their loss. Your packets 
posterior to the date of my misfortunes, commencing 
with that valuable consolatory epistle, are every day 
accumulating, — they are sacred things with me. 

Publish your Burns ^ when and how you like ; it 
will be new to me, — my memory of it is very con- 
fused, and tainted with unpleasant associations. 
Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of 
yours. I am jealous of your fraternizing with Bowles, 
when I think you relish him more than Burns or my 
old favorite, Cowper. But you conciliate matters 
when you talk of the " divine chit-chat " of the 
latter ; by the expression I see you thoroughly relish 
him. I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an 
hundred-fold more dearly than if she heaped " line 
upon line," out- Hannah- ing Hannah More, and had 

1 Epistle to Arbuthnot : — 

" Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope, 
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope." 

2 The lines on him which Coleridge had sent to Lamb, 
and which the latter had burned. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 73 

rather hear you sing "Did a very httle baby" by 
your family fireside, than listen to you when you 
were repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets in 
your sweet manner, while we two were indulging 
sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fireside at the 
" Salutation." Yet have I no higher ideas of heaven. 
Your company was one " cordial in this melancholy 
vale," — the remembrance of it is a blessing partly, 
and partly a curse. When I can abstract myself 
from things present, I can enjoy it with a fresh- 
ness of relish ; but it more constantly operates to 
an unfavorable comparison with the uninterest- 
ing converse I always and only can partake in. Not 
a soul loves Bowles here ; scarce one has heard of 
Burns ; few but laugh at me for reading my Testa- 
ment, — they talk a language I understand not ; I 
conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them. 
I can only converse with you by letter, and with the 
dead in their books. My sister, Ind'eed, is all I can 
wish in a companion; but our spirits are alike 
poorly, our reading and knowledge from the self- 
same sources, our communication with the scenes of 
the world alike narrow. Never having kept separate 
company, or any " company " together; never hav- 
ing read separate books, and few books together, — 
what knowledge have we to convey to each other? 
In our little range of duties and connections, how few 
sentiments can take place without friends, with few 
books, with a taste for religion rather than a strong 
religious habit ! We need some support, some 
leading-strings to cheer and direct us. You talk 
very wisely ; and be not sparing of your advice. 



74 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Continue to remember us, and to show us you do 
remember us ; we will take as lively an interest in 
what concerns you and yours. All I can add to 
your happiness will be sympathy. You can add to 
mine more: you can teach me wisdom. I am in- 
deed an unreasonable correspondent ; but I was 
unwilling to let my last night's letter go off without 
this qualifier : you will perceive by this my mind is 
easier, and you will rejoice. I do not expect or 
wish you to write till you are moved ; and of course 
shall not, till you announce to me that event, think 
of writing myself. Love to Mrs. Coleridge and 
David Hartley, and my kind remembrance to 
Lloyd, if he is with you. 

C. Lamb. 

XL 

TO COLERIDGE. 

January 5, 1797. 

Sunday Morning. — You cannot surely mean to 

degrade the Joan of Arc into a pot-girl.^ You are 

not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid 

ornament of Southey's poem all this cock-and-a-buU 

1 Coleridge, in later years, indorsed Lamb's opinion of this 
portion of his contribution to "Joan of Arc." " I was really 
astonished," he said, "(i) at the schoolboy, wretched, alle- 
goric machinery; {2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic 
virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the " Age of 
Reason," — a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the utter want 
of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down 
of the pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew 
in the single lines." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 75 

Story of Joan, the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, 
with the lamentable episode of a wagoner, his wife, 
and six children. The texture will be most lamenta- 
bly disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of 
these addenda are no doubt in their way admirable 
too ; but many would prefer the Joan of Southey. 

" On mightiest deeds to brood 
Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart 
Throb fast ; anon I paused, and in a state 
Of half expectance listened to the wind." 

" They wondered at me, who had known me once 
A cheerful, careless damsel." 

" The eye, 

That of the circling throng and of the visible world, 
Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy." 

I see riothing in your description of the Maid equal 
to these. There is a fine originality certainly in those 
lines, — 

" For she had lived in this bad world 
As in a place of tombs, 
And touched not the pollutions of the dead ; " 

but your "fierce vivacity" is a faint copy of the 
'■'fierce and terrible benevolence" of Southey; 
added to this, that it will look like rivalship in you, 
and extort a comparison with Southey, — I think 
to your disadvantage. And the lines, considered in 
themselves as an addition to what you had before 
written (strains of a far higher mood), are but such 
as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more fa- 
miliar moods, — at such times as she has met Noll 
Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling 
him " old acquaintance." Southey certainly has no 



76 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry ; 
but he tells a plain tale better than you. I will enu- 
merate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad de- 
viations from that simplicity which was your aim. 
"Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture 
moving," by the by, is laughable) ; "a woman and 
six children" (by the way, why not nine children? 
It would have been just half as pathetic again) ; 
" statues of sleep they seemed ; " " frost-mangled 
wretch;" "green putridity;" "hailed him im- 
mortal" (rather ludicrous again); "voiced a sad 
and simple tale " (abominable ! ) ; " unproven- 
dered ; " " such his tale ; " " Ah, suffering to the 
height of what was sufffered " (a most insufferable 
line) ; "amazements of affright; " "The hot, sore 
brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and 
torture" (what shocking confusion of ideas !). 

In these delineations of common and natural 
feelings, in the familiar walks of poetry, yoli seem 
to resemble Montauban dancing with Roubign^'s 
tenants,^ " much of his native loftiness re77iained 
in the execution'"' 

I was reading your " Religious Musings " the other 
day, and sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the 
language next after the " Paradise Lost ; " and even 
that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. 
"There is one mind," etc., down to "Almighty's 
throne," are without a rival in the whole compass of 
my poetical reading. 

" Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze 
Views all creation." 

1 In Mackenzie's tale, "Julia de Roubigne." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 77 

I wish I could have written those hnes. I rejoice 
that I am able to relish them. The loftier walks of 
Pindus are your proper region. There you have 
no compeer in modern times. Leave the lowlands, 
unenvied, in possession of such men as Cowper 
and Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into the 
wounds I may have been inflicting on my poor 
friend's vanity. 

In your notice of Southey' s new volume you 
omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the 

*•' Miniature." 

" There were 
Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee, 
Young Robert ! " 
" Spirit of Spenser ! was the wanderer wrong ? " 

Fairfax I have been in quest of a long time. 
Johnson, in his " Life of Waller," gives a most de- 
licious specimen of him, and adds, in the true man- 
ner of that deUcate critic, as well as amiable man, 
" It may be presumed that this old version will not 
be much read after the elegant translation of my 
friend Mr. Hoole." I endeavored — I wished to 
gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, the 
great boast and ornament of the India House, but 
soon desisted. I found him more vapid than small- 
est small beer " sun-vinegared." Your "Dream," 
down to that exquisite line, — 

" I can't tell half his adventures," 

is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The re- 
mainder is so-so. The best line, I think, is, " He 
belong'd, I believe, to the witch Melancholy." By 



78 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the way, when will our volume come out ? Don't 
delay it till you have written a new ''Joan of Arc." 
Send what letters you please by me, and in any way 
you choose, single or double. The India Company 
is better adapted to answer the cost than the gener- 
ality of my friend's correspondents, — such poor and 
honest dogs as John Thelwall particularly. I can- 
not say I know Coulson, — at least intimately ; I once 
supped with him and Austin ; I think his manners 
very pleasing. I will not tell you what I think of 
Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see this letter ; 
and that thought puts a restraint on me. I cannot 
think what subject would suit your epic genius, — 
some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which 
shall be blended the sublime of poetry and of 
science. Your proposed " Hymns " will be a fit 
preparatory study wherewith " to discipline your 
young novitiate soul." I grow dull ; I '11 go walk 
myself out of my dulness. 

Sunday Night. — You and Sara are very good 
to think so kindly and so favorably of poor Mary ; 
I would to God all did so too. But I very much 
fear she must not think of coming home in my 
father's lifetime. It is very hard upon her, but 
our circumstances are peculiar, and we must submit 
to them. God be praised she is so well as she is. 
She bears her situation as one who has no right to 
complain. My poor old aunt, whom you have seen, 
the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at 
school ; who used to toddle there to bring me good 
things, when I, schoolboy- like, only despised her for 
it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 79 

herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went 
into the old grammar-school, and open her apron, 
and bring out her basin, with some nice thing she 
had caused to be saved for me, 1 — the good old 
creature is now lying on her death-bed. I cannot 
bear to think on her deplorable state. To the 
shock she received on that our evil day, from which 
she never completely recovered, I impute her ill- 
ness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come 
home to die with me. I was always her favourite ; 

" No after friendship e'er can raise 
The endearments of our early days ; 
Nor e'er the heart such fondness prove, 
As when it first began to love." 



XII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

January 10, 1797. 
I NEED not repeat my wishes to have my little 
sonnets printed verbatim my last way. In particu- 
lar, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first 
sonnet, as you have done more than once, " did the 
wand of Merlin wave," it looks so like Mr. Merlin,'^ 
the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now 
living in good health and spirits, and flourishing in 
magical reputation, in Oxford Street ', and, on my 
life, one half who read it would understand it so. 

1 See the essay, " Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years 
Ago." 

2 A well-known conjuror of the time. 



8o lETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Do put 'em forth finally, as I have, in various letters, 
settled it ; for first a man's self is to be pleased, and 
then his friends, — and of course the greater num- 
ber of his friends, if they differ inter se. Thus taste 
may safely be put to the vote. I do long to see 
our names together, — not for vanity's sake, and 
naughty pride of heart altogether; for not a living 
soul I know, or am intimate with, will scarce read 
the book, — so I shall gain nothing, quoad famam ; 
and yet there is a little vanity mixes in it, I cannot 
help denying. — I am aware of the unpoetical cast 
of the last six lines of my last sonnet, and think my- 
self unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into 
the book ; only the sentiments of those six lines are 
thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, 
and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my 
affection to poor Mary. That it has no originality 
in its cast, nor anything in the feelings but what 
is common and natural to thousands, nor ought 
properly to be called poetry, I see ; still, it will tend 
to keep present to my mind a view of things which 
I ought to indulge. These six lines, too, have not, 
to a reader, a connectedness with the foregoing. 
Omit it if you like. — What a treasure it is to my 
poor, indolent, and unemployed mind thus to lay 
hold on a subject to talk about, though 'tis but 
a sonnet, and that of the lowest order ! How 
mournfully inactive I am ! — 'T is night ; good 
night. 

My sister, I thank God, is nigh recovered ; she 
was seriously ill. Do, in your next letter, and that 
right soon, give me some satisfaction respecting 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 8i 

your present situation at Stowey. Is it a farm that 
you have got? and what does your worship know 
about farming? 

Coleridge, I want you to write an epic poem. 
Nothing short of it can satisfy the vast capacity of 
true poetic genius. Having one great end to direct 
all your poetical faculties to, and on which to lay out 
your hopes, your ambition will show you to what you 
are equal. By the sacred energies of Milton ! by 
the dainty, sweet, and soothing phantasies of honey- 
tongued Spenser ! I adjure you to attempt the 
epic, or do something more ample than the writ- 
ing an occasional brief ode or sonnet ; something 
" to make yourself forever known, — to make the 
age to come your own." But I prate ; doubtless you 
meditate something. When you are exalted among 
the lords of epic fame, I shall recall with pleasure 
and exultingly the days of your humility, when you 
disdained not to put forth, in the same volume with 
mine, your "Religious Musings" and that other 
poem from the "Joan of Arc," those promising first- 
fruits of high renown to come. You have learning, 
you have fancy, you have enthusiasm, you have 
strength and amplitude of wing enow for flights like 
those I recommend. In the vast and unexplored 
regions of fairy-land there is ground enough unfound 
and uncultivated : search there, and realize your 
favorite Susquehanna scheme. In all our com- 
parisons of taste, I do not know whether I have 
ever heard your opinion of a poet very dear to me, 
— the now-out-of-fashion Cowley. Favor me with 
your judgment of him, and tell me if his prose 

6 



82 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

essays, in particular, as well as no inconsiderable 
part of his verse, be not delicious. I prefer the 
graceful rambling of his essays even to the courtly 
elegance and ease of Addison, abstracting from this 
the latter's exquisite humor. 

When the little volume is printed, send me three 
or four, at all events not more than six, copies, and 
tell me if 1 put you to any additional expense by 
printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, 
and in that case must reimburse you. 

Priestley, whom I sin in almost adoring, speaks 
of " such a choice of company as tends to keep up 
that right bent and firmness of mind which a neces- 
sary intercourse with the world would otherwise 
warp and relax. . . . Such fellowship is the true 
balsam of life ; its cement is infinitely more durable 
th'kn that of the friendships of the world, and it 
looks for its proper fruit and complete gratification 
to the life beyond the grave." Is there a possible 
chance for such an one as I to realize in this world 
such friendships? Where am I to look for 'em? 
What testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy 
of such friendship ? Alas ! the great and good go 
together in separate herds, and leave such as I 
to lag far, far behind in all intellectual and, far 
more grievous to say, in all moral accomplishments. 
Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character 
among my acquaintance, — not one Christian ; not 
one but undervalues Christianity. Singly what am 
I to do? Wesley (have you read his life?), was he 
not an elevated character ? Wesley has said, " Re- 
ligion is not a solitary thing." Alas ! it necessarily 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. ^2> 

is so with me, or next to solitary. 'T is true you 
write to me. But correspondence by letter and 
personal intimacy are very widely different. Do, 
do write to me, and do some good to my mind, al- 
ready how much " warped and relaxed " by the 
world ! 'T is the conclusion of another evening. 
Good night ; God have us all in His keeping ! 

If you are sufficiently at leisure, obhge me with 
an account of your plan of life at Stowey ; your 
literary occupations and prospects, — in short, make 
me acquainted with every circumstance which, as 
relating to you, can be interesting to me. Are you 
yet a Berkleyan? Make me one. I rejoice in 
being, speculatively, a necessarian. Would to God 
I were habitually a practical one ! Confirm me in 
the faith of that great and glorious doctrine, and 
keep me steady in the contemplation of it. You 
some time since expressed an intention you had of 
finishing some extensive work on the Evidences of 
Natural and Revealed Religion. Have you let that 
intention go ? Or are you doing anything towards 
it? Make to yourself other ten talents. My letter 
is full of nothingness. I talk of nothing. But I 
must talk. I love to write to you. I take a pride 
in it. It makes me think less meanly of myself. It 
makes me think myself not totally disconnected 
from the better part of mankind. I know I am too 
dissatisfied with the beings around me ; but I can- 
not help occasionally exclaiming, " Woe is me, that 
I am constrained to dwell with Meshech, and to 
have my habitation among the tents of Kedar." I 
know I am noways better in practice than my neigh- 



^4 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

bors, but I have a taste for religion, an occasional 
earnest aspiration after perfection, which they have 
not. I gain nothing by being with such as myself, 
— we encourage one another in mediocrity. I am 
always longing to be with men more excellent than 
myself. All this must sound odd to you ; but these 
are my predominant feelings when I sit down to 
write to you, and I should put force upon my mind, 
were I to reject them. Yet I rejoice, and feel my 
privilege with gratitude, when I have been reading 
some wise book, such as I have just been reading, — 
Priestley on Philosophical Necessity, — in the thought 
that I enjoy a kind of communion, a kind of friend- 
ship even, with the great and good. Books are to 
me instead of friends. I wish they did not resemble 
the latter in their scarceness. 

And how does little David Hartley ? " Ecquid in 
antiquam virtutem?" Does his mighty name work 
wonders yet upon his little frame and opening mind ? 
I did not distinctly understand you, — you don't 
mean to make an actual ploughman of him? Is 
Lloyd with you yet ? Are you intimate with Southey ? 
What poems is he about to publish? He hath a 
most prolific brain, and is indeed a most sweet poet. 
But how can you answer all the various mass of 
interrogation I have put to you in the course of 
the sheet? Write back just what you like, only 
write something, however brief. I have now nigh 
finished my page, and got to the end of another 
evening (Monday evening), and my eyes are heavy 
and sleepy, and my brain unsuggestive. I have 
just heart enough awake to say good night once 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 85 

more, and God love you, my dear friend ; God love 
us all ! Mary bears an affectionate remembrance of 

you. 

Charles Lamb. 



XIII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

February 13, 1797. 
Your poem is altogether admirable — parts of it 
are even exquisite ; in particular your personal ac- 
count of the Maid far surpasses anything of the 
sort in Southey.^ I perceived all its excellences, 
on a first reading, as readily as now you have been 
removing a supposed film from my eyes. I was 
only struck with a certain faulty disproportion in 
the matter and the style, which I still think I per- 
ceive, between these lines and the former ones. I 
had an end in view, — I wished to make you reject 
the poem, only as being discordant with the other ; 
and, in subservience to that end, it was politically 
done in me to over-pass, and make no mention of, 
merit which, could you think me capable of over- 
looking, might reasonably damn forever in your 
judgment all pretensions in me to be critical. There, 
I will be judged by Lloyd whether I have not made 
a very handsome recantation. I was in the case of 
a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a 
certain young lady ; the deluded wight gives judg- 
ment against her in toto, — don't like her face, her 

1 See Letter VIII. 



86 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

walk, her manners ; finds fault with her eyebrows ; 
can see no wit in her. His friend looks blank; 
he begins to smell a rat ; wind veers about ; he ac- 
knowledges her good sense, her judgment in dress, 
a certain simplicity of manners and honesty of heart, 
something too in her manners which gains upon you 
after a short acquaintance, — and then her accurate 
pronunciation of the French language, and a pretty, 
uncultivated taste in drawing. The reconciled gen- 
tleman smiles applause, squeezes him by the hand, 
and hopes he will do him the honor of taking a bit 

of dinner with Mrs. and him — a plain family 

dinner — some day next week ; '^ for, I suppose, 
you never heard we were married. I 'm glad to 
see you like my wife, however ; you '11 come and 
see her, ha? " Now am I too proud to retract en- 
tirely? Yet I do perceive I am in some sort strait- 
ened ; you are manifestly wedded to this poem, and 
what fancy has joined, let no man separate. I turn 
me to the "Joan of Arc," second book. 

The solemn openings of it are with sounds which, 
Lloyd would say, " are silence to the mind." The 
deep preluding strains are fitted to initiate the mind, 
with a pleasing awe, into the sublimest mysteries of 
theory concerning man's nature and his noblest 
destination, — the philosophy of a first cause ; of 
subordinate agents in creation superior to man; 
the subserviency of pagan worship and pagan faith 
to the introduction of a purer and more perfect reli- 
gion, which you so elegantly describe as winning, 
with gradual steps, her difficult way northward from 
Bethabara. After all this cometh Joan, a publican's 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 87 

daughter, sitting od an ale-house bench, and marking 
the swingings of the signboard, finding a poor man, 
his wife and six children, starved to death with cold, 
and thence roused into a state of mind proper to 
receive visions emblematical of equality, — which, 
what the devil Joan had to do with, I don't know, 
or indeed with the French and American revolu- 
tions ; though that needs no pardon, it is executed 
so nobly. After all, if you perceive no dispropor- 
tion, all argument is vain; I do not so much object 
to parts. Again, when you talk of building your 
fame on these lines in preference to the " Religious 
Musings j" I cannot help conceiving of you and of 
the author of that as two different persons, and I 
think you a very vain man. 

I have been re-reading your letter. Much of it I 
could dispute ; but with the latter part of it, in which 
you compare the two Joans with respect to their 
predispositions for fanaticism, I toto corde coincide ; 
only I think that Southey's strength rather lies in 
the description of the emotions of the Maid under 
the weight of inspiration. These (I see no mighty 
difference between her describing them or you de- 
scribing them), — these if you only equal, the pre- 
vious admirers of his poem, as is natural, will prefer 
his ; if you surpass, prejudice will scarcely allow it, 
and I scarce think you will surpass, though your 
specimen at the conclusion (I am in earnest) I think 
very nigh equals them. And in an account of a 
fanatic or of a prophet the description of her emo- 
tions is expected to be most highly finished. By 
the way, I spoke far too disparagingly of your lines. 



SS LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

and, I am ashamed to say, purposely. I should like 
you to specify or particularize ; the story of the 
"Tottering Eld," of "his eventful years all come 
and gone," is too general ; why not make him a 
soldier, or some character, however, in which he 
has been witness to frequency of " cruel wrong and 
strange distress " ? I think I should. When I 
laughed at the " miserable man crawling from 
beneath the coverture," I wonder I did not perceive 
it was a laugh of horror, — such as I have laughed 
at Dante's picture of the famished Ugolino. With- 
out falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in 
your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive 
something out-of-the-way, something unsimple and 
artificial, in the expression, "voiced a sad tale." I 
hate made-dishes at the muses' banquet. I be- 
lieve I was wrong in most of my other objections. 
But surely "hailed him immortal " adds nothing to 
the terror of the man's death, which it was your 
business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase 
which takes away all terror from it. I like that line, 
" They closed their eyes in sleep, nor knew 't was 
death." Indeed, there is scarce a line I do not like. 
" Turbid ecstasy " is surely not so good as what 
you /z<^^ written, — "troublous." "Turbid" rather 
suits the muddy kind of inspiration which London 
porter confers. The versification is throughout, to 
my ears, unexceptionable, with no disparagement to 
the measure of the " Religious Musings," which is 
exactly fitted to the thoughts. 

You were building your house on a rock when 
you rested your fame on that poem. I can scarce 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 89 

bring myself to believe that I am admitted to a 
familiar correspondence, and all the license of friend- 
ship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton. 
Now, this is delicate flattery, indirect flattery. Go 
on with your " Maid of Orleans," and be content to 
be second to yourself. I shall become a convert to 
it, when 't is finished. 

This afternoon I attend the funeral of my poor 
old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thank- 
ful that the good creature has ended all her days of 
suffering and infirmity. She was to me the " che- 
risher of infancy ; " and one must fall on these occa- 
sions into reflections, which it would be common- 
place to enumerate, concerning death, ^' of chance 
and change, and fate in human hfe." Good God, 
who could have foreseen all this but four months 
back ! I had reckoned, in particular, on my aunt's 
living many years ; she was a very hearty old woman. 
But she was a mere skeleton before she died ; looked 
more like a corpse that had lain weeks in the grave, 
than one fresh dead. " Truly the light is sweet, and 
a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun : 
but let a man live many days, and rejoice in them 
all ; yet let him remember the days of darkness, for 
they shall be many." Coleridge, why are we to live 
on after all the strength and beauty of existence are 
gone, when all the life of life is fled, as poor Burns 
expresses it? Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of 
turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather 
just beginning to read, a most capital book, good 
thoughts in good language, William Penn's "No 
Cross, no Crown; " I like it immensely. Unluckily 



90 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John 
Street, yesterday, and saw a man mider all the agita- 
tions and workings of a fanatic, who believed fiimself 
under the influence of some " inevitable presence." 
This cured me of Quakerism ; I love it in the books 
of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a 
man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what 
he says an ordinary man might say without all that 
quaking and trembUng. In the midst of his inspi- 
ration, — and the effects of it were most noisy, — was 
handed into the midst of the meeting a most terrible 
blackguard Wapping sailor ; the poor man, I believe, 
had rather have been in the hottest part of an 
engagement, for the congregation of broad-brims, 
together with the ravings of the prophet, were too 
much for his gravity, though I saw even he had 
delicacy enough not to laugh out. And the inspired 
gentleman, though his manner was so supernatural, 
yet neither talked nor professed to talk anything 
more than good sober sense, common morality, with 
now and then a declaration of not speaking from 
himself. Among other things, looking back to this 
childhood and early youth, he told the meeting what 
a graceless young dog he had been, that in his youth 
he had a good share of wit. Reader, if thou hadst 
seen the gentleman, thou wouldst have sworn that 
it must indeed have been many years ago, for his 
rueful physiognomy would have scared away the play- 
ful goddess from the meeting, where he presided, 
forever. A wit ! a wit ! what could he mean ? 
Lloyd, it minded me of Falkland in the "Rivals," 
" Am I full of wit and humor? No, indeed, you are 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 91 

not. Am I the life and soul of every company I 
come into? No, it cannot be said you are." That 
hard-faced gentleman a wit ! Why, Nature wrote 
on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, " Wit never 
comes, that comes to all." I should be as scanda- 
lized at a don-mot issuing from his oracle-looking 
mouth as to see Cato go down a country- dance. 
God love you all ! You are very good to submit 
to be pleased with reading my nothings. 'T is the 
privilege of friendship to talk nonsense and to have 
her nonsense respected. Yours ever, 

C. Lamb. 



XIV. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

January 28, 1798. 
You have writ me many kind letters, and I have 
answered none of them. I don't deserve your 
attentions. An unnatural indifference has been 
creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I 
should have seized the first opening of a corre- 
spondence with you. To you I owe much under 
God. In my brief acquaintance with you in Lon- 
don, your conversations won me to the better cause, 
and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the 
world. I might have been a worthless character 
without you; as it is, I do possess a certain im- 
provable portion of devotional feehngs, though when 
I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not 
according to the common measures of human judg- 



92 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

ment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is 
no cant. I am very sincere. 

These last afflictions,^ Coleridge, have failed to 
soften and bend my will. They found me unpre- 
pared. My former calamities produced in me a 
spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought 
they had sufficiently disciplined me ; but the event 
ought to humble me. If God's judgments now fail 
to take away from me the heart of stone, what more 
grievous trials ought I not to expect? I have been 
very querulous, impatient under the rod, full of lit- 
tle jealousies and heartburnings. I had wellnigh 
quarrelled with Charles Lloyd, and for no other 
reason, I believe, than that the good creature did 
all he could to make me happy. The truth is, I 
thought he tried to force my mind from its natural 
and proper bent : he continually wished me to be 
from home ; he was drawing me from the consider- 
ation of my poor dear Mary's situation, rather than 
assisting me to gain a proper view of it with relig- 
ious consolations. I wanted to be left to the ten- 
dency of my own mind in a solitary state which, 
in times past, I knew had led to quietness and a 
patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I 
was not more constantly with him ; but he was 
living with White, — a man to whom I had never 
been accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, 
though from long habits of friendliness, and many 
a social and good quality, I loved him very much. 
I met company there sometimes, — indiscriminate 
company. Any society almost, when I am in afflic- 

1 Mary Lamb had fallen ill again. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 93 

tion, is sorely painful to me. I seem to breathe 
more freely, to think more collectedly, to feel more 
properly and calmly, when alone. All these things 
the good creature did with the kindest intentions 
in the world, but they produced in me nothing but 
soreness and discontent. I became, as he com- 
plained, " jaundiced " towards him. . . . But he has 
forgiven me; and his smile, I hope, will draw all 
such humors from me. I am recovering, God be 
praised for it, a healthiness of mind, something like 
calmness ; but I want more religion, I am jealous 
of human helps and leaning- places. I rejoice in 
your good fortunes. May God at the last settle 
you ! You have had many and painful trials ; hu- 
manly speaking, they are going to end ; but we 
should rather pray that discipline may attend us 
through the whole of our lives. ... A careless and 
a dissolute spirit has advanced upon me with large 
strides. Pray God that my present afflictions may 
be sanctified to me ! Mary is recovering ; but I 
see no opening yet of a situation for her. Your invi- 
tation went to my very heart ; but you have a power 
of exciting interest, of leading all hearts captive, too 
forcible to admit of Mary's being with you. I con- 
sider her as perpetually on the brink of madness. 
I think you would almost make her dance within 
an inch of the precipice ; she must be with duller 
fancies and cooler intellects. I know a young man 
of this description who has suited her these twenty 
years, and may live to do so still, if we are one day 
restored to each other. In answer to your sugges- 
tions of occupation for me, I must say that I do 



94 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

not think my capacity altogether suited for dis- 
quisitions of that kind. ... I have read little ; I 
have a very weak memory, and retain little of what 
I read ; am unused to composition in which any 
methodizing is required. But I thank you sincerely 
for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able, 
— that is, endeavor to engage my mind in some con- 
stant and innocent pursuit. I know my capacities 
better than you do. 

Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, 
as ever. 

C. L. 

XV. 

TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 

(No month, 1798.) 
Dear Southey, — I thank you heartily for the 
eclogue ; ^ it pleases me mightily, being so full 
of picture-work and circumstances. I find no fault 
in it, unless perhaps that Joanna's ruin is a catas- 
trophe too trite ; and this is not the first or second 
time you have clothed your indignation, in verse, in 
a tale of ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning 
in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some 
kindred with old Margaret. I could almost wish 
you to vary some circumstances in the conclusion. 
A gentleman seducer has so often been described 
in prose and verse : what if you had accomplished 
Joanna's ruin by the clumsy arts and rustic gifts 
of some country fellow? I am thinking, I believe, 
of the song, — 

1 The eclogue was entitled " The Ruined Cottage." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 95 

*' An old woman clothed in gray, 

Whose daughter was charming and young. 
And she was deluded away 

By Roger's false, flattering tongue." 

A Roger- Lothario would be a novel character; I 
think you might paint him very well. You may 
think this a very silly suggestion, and so indeed it 
is ; but, in good truth, nothing else but the first 
words of that foolish ballad put me upon scribbling 
my " Rosamund." ^ But I thank you heartily for 
the poem. Not having anything of my own to send 
you in return, — though, to tell truth, I am at work 
upon something which, if I were to cut away and 
garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two 
that might not displease you ; but I will not do 
that ; and whether it will come to anything, I know 
not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter when 
I compose anything. I will crave leave to put 
down a few lines of old Christopher Marlowe's ; I 
take them from his tragedy, "The Jew of Malta." 
The Jew is a famous character, quite out of nature ; 
but when we consider the terrible idea our simple 
ancestors had of a Jew, not more to be discom- 
mended for a certain discoloring (I think Addison 
calls it) than the witches and fairies of Marlowe's 
mighty successor. The scene is betwixt Barabas, 
the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish captive exposed 
to sale for a slave. 

Barabas. 
{A p7'ecioiis rascal.) 
" As for myself, I walk abroad o' nights, 
And kill sick people groaning under walls ; 

1 His romance, " Rosamund Gray." 



96 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Sometimes I go about and poison wells ; 

And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, 

I am content to lose some of my crowns, 

That I may, walking in my gallery, 

See 'm go pinioned along by my door. 

Being young, I studied physic, and began 

To practise first upon the Italian ; 

There I enriched the priests with burials. 

And always kept the sexton's arms in ure ^ 

With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells. 

And after that, was I an engineer. 

And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, 

Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth, 

Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. 

Then after that was I an usurer, 

And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, 

And tricks belonging unto brokery, 

I fiU'd the jails with bankrupts in a year. 

And with young orphans planted hospitals, 

And every moon made some or other mad ; 

And now and then one hang'd himself for grief, 

Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, 

How I with interest tormented him." 

Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle nature, ex- 
plain how he has spent his time : — 

Ithamore. 

[A Comical Dog.) 

" Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, 
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley-slaves. 
One time I was an hostler in an inn. 
And in the night-time secret would I steal 
To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. 
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, 
I strewed powder on the marble stones, 
And therewithal their knees would rankle so, 

1 Use. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 97 

That I have laugh'd a-good to see the cripples 
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts." 

Barabas. 
" Why, this is something." 

There is a mixture of the ludicrous and the 
terrible in these lines, brimful of genius and antique 
invention, that at first reminded me of your old 
description of cruelty in hell, which was in the true 
Hogarthian style. I need not tell yotc that Marlowe 
was author of that pretty madrigal, ^' Come live with 
me, and be my Love," and of the tragedy of " Ed- 
ward II.," in which are certain lines unequalled in 
our English tongue. Honest Walton mentions the 
said madrigal under the denomination of " certain 
smooth verses made long since by Kit Marlowe." 

I am glad you have put me on the scent after old 
Quarles. If I do not put up those eclogues, and 
that shortly, say I am no true-nosed hound. I have 
had a letter from Lloyd ; the young metaphysician 
of Caius is well, and is busy recanting the new 
heresy, metaphysics, for the old dogma Greek. My 
sister, I thank you, is quite well. She had a slight 
attack the other day, which frightened me a good 
deal ; but it went off unaccountably. Love and 
respects to Edith. 

Yours sincerely, 

C. Lamb. 



98 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



XVI. 

TO SOUTHEY. 

November?), 1798. 
I PERFECTLY accord with your opinion of old Wither. 
Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold 
of the heart. Quarles thinks of his audience when 
he lectures ; Wither soliloquizes in company with a 
full heart. What wretched stuff are the " Divine 
Fancies " of Quarles ! Religion appears to him no 
longer valuable than it furnishes matter for quibbles 
and riddles ; he turns God's grace into wantonness. 
Wither is like an old friend, whose warm-heartedness 
and estimable qualities make us wish he possessed 
more genius, but at the same time make us willing 
to dispense with that want. I always love W., and 
sometimes admire Q. Still, that portrait is a fine 
one ; and the extract from '^ The Shepherds' Hunt- 
ing " places him in a starry height far above Quarles. 
If you wrote that review in " Crit. Rev.," I am sorry 
you are so sparing of praise to the " Ancient Mari- 
nere ; " -^ so far from calling it, as you do, with 
some wit but more severity, "A Dutch Attempt," 
etc., I call it a right English attempt, and a success- 
ful one, to dethrone German sublimity. You have 
selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but 
have passed by fifty passages as miraculous as the 

1 The "Lyrical Ballads " of Wordsworth and Coleridge 
had just appeared. The volume contained four pieces, in- 
cluding the " Ancient Mariner," by Coleridge. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 99 

miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the 
pathetic as in that part, — 

" A spring of love gush'd from my heart, 
And I bless'd them unaware." 

It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. 
Lloyd does not like it ; his head is too metaphysical, 
and your taste too correct, — at least I must allege 
something against you both, to excuse my own 
dotage, — 

" So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be ! " etc. 

But you allow some elaborate beauties j you should 
have extracted 'em. " The Ancient Marinere " plays 
more tricks with the mind than that last poem, 
which is yet one of the finest written. But I am 
getting too dogmatical; and before I degenerate 
into abuse, I will conclude with assuring you that 
I am, Sincerely yours, 

C. Lamb. 



XVII. 

TO SOUTHEY. 



November 28, 1798. 



I SHOWED my " Witch " and " Dying Lover " to 
Dyer^ last night; but George could not compre- 

1 This quaint scholar, a marvel of simplicity and universal 
optimism, is a constantly recurring and delightfully humorous 
character in the Letters. Lamb and Dyer had been school- 
fellows at Christ's Hospital. 



lOO LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

hend how that could be poetry which did not go 
upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had 
taught it to do ; so George read me some lectures 
on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epi- 
gram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his 
doctrine by correcting a proof-sheet of his own 
Lyrics. George writes odes where the rhymes, like 
fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable dis- 
tance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that " ob- 
serving the laws of verse." George tells you, before 
he recites, that you must listen with great attention, 
or you '11 miss the rhymes. I did so, and found 
them pretty exact. George, speaking of the dead 
Ossian, exclaimeth, " Dark are the poet's eyes." I 
humbly represented to him that his own eyes were 
dark, and many a living bard's besides, and recom- 
mended " Clos'd are the poet's eyes." But that 
would not do. I found there was an antithesis be- 
tween the darkness of his eyes and the splendor of 
his genius, and I acquiesced. 

Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable 
and truly Marlowish. . . . Lloyd objects to " shut- 
ting up the womb of his purse " in my Curse (which 
for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not 
too mild, I hope): do you object? I think there 
is a strangeness in the idea, as well as " shaking the 
poor like snakes from his door," which suits the 
speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from 
their own familiar objects, and snakes and shutting 
up of wombs are in their way. I don't know that 
this last charge has been before brought against 'em, 
nor either the sour milk or the mandrake babe ; but 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 10 1 

I affirm these be things a witch would do if she 
could. 

My tragedy ^ will be a medley (as I intend it to 
be a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, 
and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, hu- 
mor, and if possible, sublimity, — at least, it is not 
a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend 
most of these discordant colors. Heaven send they 
dance not the "Dance of Death!" I hear that 
the Two Noble Englishmen ^ have parted no sooner 
than they set foot on German earth ; but I have not 
heard the reason, — possibly to give novelists a 
handle to exclaim, "Ah me, what things are per- 
fect ! " I think I shall adopt your emendation in 
the " Dying Lover," though I do not myself feel the 
objection against " Silent Prayer." 

My tailor has brought me home a new coat 
lapelled, with a velvet collar. He assures me every- 
body wears velvet collars now. Some are born 
fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like 
your humble servant, have fashion thrust upon them. 
The rogue has been making inroads hitherto by mod- 
est degrees, foisting upon me an additional button, 
recommending gaiters ; but to come upon me thus in 
a full tide of luxury, neither becomes him as a tailor 
or the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman was 
robbed the other day, coming with his wife and fam- 
ily in a one-horse shay from Hampstead ; the villains 
rifled him of four guineas, some shillings and half- 

1 John Woodvil. 

2 Coleridge and Wordsworth, who started for Germany 
together. 



I02 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pence, and a bundle of customers' measures, which 
they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot 
him, and when they rode off he addressed them with 
profound gratitude, making a congee : " Gentlemen, 
I wish you good-night ; and we are very much obhged 
to you that you have not used us ill ! " And this is 
the cuckoo that has the audacity to foist upon me 
ten buttons on a side and a black velvet collar, — a 
cursed ninth of a scoundrel ! 

When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin 
correspondents to address him as Mr. C. L. Love 
and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. 
Yours sincerely, 

C. Lamb. 

XVIII. 

TO SOUTHEY. 

March 20, 1799- 
I AM hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your 
old freemason," as you call him. The three first 
stanzas are delicious ; they seem to me a com- 
pound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of 
home -strokes, where more is felt than strikes the 
ear, — a terseness, a jocular pathos which makes 
one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel 
and pleasing. I could almost wonder Rob Burns 
in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth 
stanza is less striking, as being less original. The 
fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old- 
fashioned phrase or feeling. 

" Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams," 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 103 

savor neither of Burns nor Quarles ; they seem more 
like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. 
The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I ex- 
cept the two concluding lines, which are Burns all 
over. I wish, if you concur with me, these things 
could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind of 
writing which comes tenfold better recommended 
to the heart, comes there more like a neighbor or 
familiar, than thousands of Hamnels and Zillahs 
and Madelons. I beg you will send me the " Holly- 
tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please 
me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of 
poems, that open a new intercourse with the most 
despised of the animal and insect race. I think 
this vein may be further opened ; Peter Pindar hath 
very prettily apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his 
mouse and his louse ; Coleridge, less successfully, 
hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, 
— therein only following at unresembling distance 
Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I 
know of no other examples of breaking down the 
partition between us and our " poor earth-born 
companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put 
in a track of feeling by other people, not one's own 
immediate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if 
I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of 
these animal poems, which might have a tendency 
to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy 
of mankind. Some thoughts come across me : 
for instance, to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, 
to a mole, — people bake moles alive by a slow 
oven-fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed. 



I04 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the most despised and contemptible parts of God's 
earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching 
him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me 
to this hour. Toads, you know, are made to fly, 
and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cock- 
chafers are old sport ; then again to a worm, with 
an apostrophe to anglers, — those patient tyrants, 
meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; ^ to 
an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their 
poison ; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own 
fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest 
many more. A series of such poems, suppose them 
accompanied with plates descriptive of animal tor- 
ments, — cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimp- 
ing skates, etc., — would take excessively. I will 
willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with 
you ; I think my heart and soul would go with it 
too, — at least, give it a thought. My plan is but 
this minute come into my head ; but it strikes me 
instantaneously as something new, good, and useful, 
full of pleasure and full of moral. If old Quarles 
and Wither could live again, we would invite them 
into our firm. Burns hath done his part. 

Poor Sam Le Grice ! I am afraid the world 

1 Leigh Hunt says : "Walton says that an angler does no 
hurt but to fish ; and this he counts as nothing. . . . Now, 
fancy a Genius fishing for us. Fancy him baiting a great 
hook with pickled salmon, and twitching up old Izaac Walton 
from the banks of the River Lee, with the hook through his 
ear. How he would go up, roaring and screaming, and 
thinking the devil had got him ! 

" ' Other joys 
Are but toys.' 

Walton." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 105 

and the camp and the university have spoiled him 
among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a 
strong capacity of turning out something better. I 
knew him, and that not long since, when he had a 
most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indiffer- 
ence I have sometimes felt towards him. I think 
the devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations 
to that man for the warmest friendship and hear- 
tiest sympathy,^ even for an agony of sympathy 
expressed both by word and deed, and tears for me 
when I was in my greatest distress. But I have 
forgot that, — as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the aw- 
ful scenes which were before his eyes when he 
served the office of a comforter to me. No service 
was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. 
I can't think what but the devil, " that old spider," 
could have suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of 
all gratitude. If he does come in your way, Southey, 
fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate 
remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest 
wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am seri- 
ous. I cannot recommend him to your society, 
because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of 
it. But I have no right to dismiss him from my 
regard. He was at one time, and in the worst of 
times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to 
me then. I have known him to play at cards with 
my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day 
long, in long days too, to save me from being teased 
by the old man when I was not able to bear it. 
God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey ! 

C. L. 

1 See Letter VI. 



I06 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 



XIX. 

TO THOMAS MANNING.i 

March i, 1800. 
I HOPE by this time you are prepared to say the 
" Falstaff's Letters " are a bundle of the sharpest, 
queerest, profoundest humors of any these juice- 
drained latter times have spawned. I should have 
advertised you that the meaning is frequently hard 
to be got at, — and so are the future guineas that 
now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some 
undiscovered Potosi ; but dig, dig, dig, dig. Man- 
ning ! I set to with an unconquerable propulsion to 
write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My 
private goings on are orderly as the movements of 
the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. 
Public affairs, except as they touch upon me, and 
so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to 
feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War 
and Nature and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's 
best parlour, should have conspired to call up three 

1 To this remarkable person we are largely indebted for 
some of the best of Lamb's letters, lie was mathematical 
tutor at Caius College, Cambridge, and in later years be- 
came somewhat famous as an explorer of the remoter parts 
of China and Thibet. Lamb had been introduced to him, 
during a Cambridge visit, by Charles Lloyd, and afterwards 
told Crabb Robinson that he was the most " wonderful man " 
he ever met. An account of Manning will be found in the 
memoir prefixed to his "Journey to Lhasa," in 1811-12. 
(George Bogle and Thomas Manning's Journey to Thibet and 
Lhasa, by C. R. Markham, 1876.) 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 107 

necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew 
them, into the upper house of luxuries, — bread and 
beer and coals, Manning. But as to France and 
Frenchmen, and the Abbe Sieyes and his constitu- 
tions, I cannot make these present times present to 
me. I read histories of the past, and I live in 
them ; although, to abstract senses, they are far less 
momentous than the noises which keep Europe 
awake. I am reading Burnet's *' Own Times." Did 
you ever read that garrulous, pleasant history? He 
tells his story like an old man, past political service, 
bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part 
he took in public transactions when " his old cap 
was new." Full of scandal, which all true history is. 
No palliatives ; but all the stark wickedness that 
actually gives the momentum to national actors. 
Quite the prattle of age and outlived importance. 
Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually 
in alto relievo. Himself a party man, he makes 
you a party man. None of the cursed philosophi- 
cal Humeian indifference, so cold and unnatural 
and inhuman ! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine 
writing, so fine and composite. None of Dr. Rob- 
ertson's periods with three members. None of Mr. 
Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming 
in so clever, lest the reader should have had the 
trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet's good 
old prattle I can bring present to my mind ; I can 
make the Revolution present to me : the French 
Revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, 
I fling as far from me. To quit this tiresome sub- 
ject, and to relieve you from two or three dismal 



I08 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

yawns, which I hear in spirit, I here conclude my 
more than commonly obtuse letter, — dull up to the 
dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shakspeare. 
My love to Lloyd and Sophia. 

C. L. 

XX. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

May 12, 1800. 

My dear Coleridge, — I don't know why I write, 
except from the propensity misery has to tell her 
griefs. Hetty ^ died on Friday night, about eleven 
o'clock, after eight days' illness ; Mary, in conse- 
quence of fatigue and anxiety, is fallen ill again, and 
I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am left 
alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead 
body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, 
and then I shall be quite alone, with nothing but a 
cat to remind me that the house has been full of 
living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, 
and I don't know where to look for relief. Mary 
will get better again ; but her constantly being liable 
to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of 
our evils that her case and all our story is so well 
known around us. We are in a manner marked. 
Excuse my troubling you ; but I have nobody by me 
to speak to me. I slept out last night, not being 
able to endure the change and the stillness. But I 
did not sleep well, and I must come back to my 
own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to 
1 The Lambs' old servant. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 109 

come and be with me to-morrow. I am completely 
shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. I almost 
wish that Mary were dead. God bless you. Love 
to Sara and Hartley. 

C. Lamb. 



XXI. 

TO MANNING. 

Before June, 1800. 

Dear Manning, — I feel myself unable to thank 
you sufficiently for your kind letter. It was doubly 
acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry and 
the kind, honest prose which it contained. It was 
just such a letter as I should have expected from 
Manning. 

I am in much better spirits than when I wrote 
last. I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with 
a friend in town. He will have rooms to let at mid- 
summer, by which time I hope my sister will be well 
enough to join me. It is a great object to me to 
live in town, where we shall be much more private, 
and to quit a house and neighborhood where poor 
Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has made 
us a sort of marked people. We can be nowhere 
private except in the midst of London. We shall 
be in a family where we visit very frequently ; only 
my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclu- 
sion. He has a partner to consult. I am still 
on the tremble, for I do not know where we could 
go into lodgings that would not be, in many re- 
spects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary 



no LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

well again, and I hope all will be well ! The pros- 
pect, such as it is, has made me quite happy. I 
have just time to tell you of it, as I know it will give 

you pleasure. Farewell. 

C. Lamb. 



XXII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

August, 6, 1800. 
Dear Coleridge, — I have taken to-day and 
delivered to Longman and Co., Imprimis : your 
books, viz., three ponderous German dictiona- 
ries, one volume (I can find no more) of German 
and French ditto, sundry other German books un- 
bound, as you left them, Percy's Ancient Poetry, 
and one volume of Anderson's Poets. I specify 
them, that you may not lose any. Secundo : a 
dressing-gown (value, fivepence) , in which you used 
to sit and look like a conjuror when you were 
translating " Wallenstein." A case of two razors 
and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a 
severe struggle to part with. They are in a brown- 
paper parcel, which also contains sundry papers 
and poems, sermons, so7ne few Epic poems, — one 
about Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, 
etc., and also your tragedy ; with one or two small 
German books, and that drama in which Got-fader 
performs. Tertio : a small oblong box containing 
all you7' letters, collected from all your waste papers, 
and which fill the said little box. All other waste 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. II I 

papers, which I judged worth sending, are in the 
paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find all your 
letters in the box by themselves. Thus have I dis- 
charged my conscience and my lumber-room of all 
your property, save and except a foho entitled 
Tyrrell's "Bibliotheca Politica," which you used to 
learn your politics out of when you wrote for the Post, 
— mutatis mutandis, i. e., applying past inferences 
to modern data. I retain that, because I am sensi- 
ble I am very deficient in the politics myself; and I 
have torn up — don't be angry; waste paper has 
risen forty per cent, and I can't aiford to buy it — 
all Bonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise 
on Corn, and one or two more light-armed infantry, 
which I thought better suited the flippancy of Lon- 
dbn discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking. 
Mary says you will be in a passion about them when 
you come to miss them ; but you must study philoso- 
phy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis Amissis 
five times over after phlebotomizing, — 'tis Burton's 
recipe, — and then be angry with an absent friend if 
you can. Sara is obscure. Am I to understand by 
her letter that she sends a kiss to Eliza Bucking- 
ham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interro- 
gation on the superscription of a letter is highly 
ungrammatical ! She proposes writing my name 
Lambe? Lamb is quite enough. I have had the 
Anthology, and like only one thing in it, — Lewti ; but 
of that the last stanza is detestable, the rest most 
exquisite ! The epithet enviable would dash the 
finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more 
serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by 



112 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

teniiing me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in 
better verses.-^ It did well enough five years ago, 
when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb 
enough at the time you wrote the lines, to feed upon 
such epithets ; but, besides that, the meaning of 
"gentle" is equivocal at best, and almost always 
means " poor-spirited ; " the very quality of gentle- 
ness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My 
sentiment is long since vanished. I hope my virtues 
have done sucking. I can scarce think but you 
meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should 
be ashamed to think you could think to gratify me 
by such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green- 
sick sonneteer. 



XXIII. 

TO MANNING. 

August, 1800. 

Dear Manning, — I am going to ask a favor of 
you, and am at a loss how to do it in the most deli- 
cate manner. For this purpose I have been looking 
into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to have had the 
best grace in begging of all the ancients (I read 
him in the elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth) ; but 
not finding any case there exactly similar with mine, 
I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. 
To come to the point, then, and hasten into the 

1 An allusion to Coleridge's lines, " This Lime-Tree Bower 
my Prison," wherein he styles Lamb "my gentle-hearted 
Charles." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 113 

middle of things, have you a copy of your Algebra ^ 
to give away? I do not ask it for myself; I have 
too much reverence for the Black Arts ever to ap- 
proach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist ! But that 
worthy man and excellent poet, George Dyer, made 
me a visit yesternight on purpose to borrow one, 
supposing, rationally enough, I must say, that you 
had made me a present of one before this; the 
omission of which I take to have proceeded only 
from negligence: but it is a fault. I could lend 
him no assistance. You must know he is just now 
diverted from the pursuit of Bell Letters by a par- 
adox, which he has heard his friend Frend ^ (that 
learned mathematician) maintain, that the negative 

quantities of mathematicians were merce migce, 

things scarcely in rerum naturd, and smacking too 
much of mystery for gentlemen of Mr. Frend's clear 
Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute, once set 
a-going, has seized violently on George's pericranick -, 
and it is necessary for his health that he should 
speedily come to a resolution of his doubts. He 
goes about teasing his friends with his new mathe- 
matics; he even frantically talks of purchasing 
Manning's Algebra, which shows him far gone, for, 
to my knowledge, he has not been master of seven 

shillings a good time. George's pockets and 's ; 

brains are two things in nature which do not abhor ' 
a vacuum. . . . Now, if you could step in, in this 

1 Manning, while at Cambridge, published a work on 
Algebra. 

2 The Rev. William Frend, who was expelled from Cam- 
bridge for Unitarianism. 



114 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

trembling suspense of his reason, and he should find 
on Saturday morning, lying for him at the Porter's 
Lodge, CHfford's Inn, — his safest address, — Man- 
ning's Algebra, with a neat manuscriptum in the 
blank leaf, running thus, ^'' From the Author ! " it 
might save his wits and restore the unhappy author 
to those studies of poetry and criticism which are 
at present suspended, to the infinite regret of the 
whole literary world. N. B. — Dirty books, smeared 
leaves, and dogs' ears will be rather a recommenda- 
tion than otherwise. N. B. — He must have the 
book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold 
him from madly purchasing the book on tick. . . . 
Then shall we see him sweetly restored to the chair 
of Longinus, — to dictate in smooth and modest 
phrase the laws of verse ; to prove that Theocritus 
first introduced the Pastoral, and Virgil and Pope 
brought it to its perfection ; that Gray and Mason 
(who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have 
shown a great deal of poetical fire in their lyric poetry ; 
that Aristotle's rules are not to be servilely followed, 
which George has shown to have imposed great 
shackles upon modern genius. His poems, I find, 
are to consist of two vols., reasonable octavo ; and 
a third book will exclusively contain criticisms, in 
which he asserts he has gone pi^etty deeply into the 
laws of blank verse and rhyme, epic poetry, dra- 
matic and pastoral ditto, — all which is to come out 
before Christmas. But above all he has touched 
most deeply upon the Drama, comparing the English 
with the modern German stage, their merits and 
defects. Apprehending that his studies (not to 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 115 

mention his turn, which I take to be chiefly towards 
the lyrical poetry) hardly quahfied him for these 
disquisitions, I modestly inquired what plays he had 
read. I found by George's reply that he had read 
Shakspeare, but that was a good while since : he 
calls him a great but irregular genius, which I think 
to be an original and just remark. (Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Marlowe, 
Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection, — 
he confessed he had read none of them, but pro- 
fessed his intention of looking through them all, so 
as to be able to touch upon them in his book.) 
So Shakspeare, Otway, and I believe Rowe, to whom 
he was naturally directed by Johnson's Lives, and 
these not read lately, are to stand him in stead of a 
general knowledge of the subject. God bless his 
dear absurd head ! 

By the by, did I not v/rite you a letter with some- 
thing about an invitation in it ? — but let that pass ; 
I suppose it is not agreeable. 

N. B. It would not be amiss if you were to ac- 
company your present with a dissertation on negative 
quantities. 

C. L. 

XXIV. 

TO MANNING. 

1800. 

George Dyer is an Archimedes and an Archi- 
magus and a Tycho Brahe and a Copernicus ; and 
thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to 



Il6 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

their wandering babe also ! We take tea with that 
learned poet and critic on Tuesday night, at half- 
past five, in his neat library ; the repast will be light 
and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive 
to wheel up thy dear carcase on the Monday, and 
after dining with us on tripe, calves' kidneys, or 
whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be 
willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not 
adjourn together to the Heathen's, thou with thy 
Black Backs, and I with some innocent volume of 
the Bell Letters, — Shenstone, or the like ; it would 
make him wash his old flannel gown (that has not 
been washed, to my knowledge, since it has been his, 
— Oh, the long time !) with tears of joy. Thou 
shouldst settle his scruples, and unravel his cobwebs, 
and sponge off the sad stuff that weighs upon his 
dear wounded pia mater ; thou shouldst restore light 
to his eyes, and him to his friends and the public ; 
Parnassus should shower her civic crowns upon thee 
for saving the wits of a citizen ! I thought I saw a 
lucid interval in George the other night : he broke 
in upon my studies just at tea-time, and brought with 
him Dr. Anderson, an old gentleman who ties his 
breeches' knees with packthread, and boasts that he 
has been disappointed by ministers. The Doctor 
wanted to see vie ; for, I being a poet, he thought I 
might furnish him with a copy of verses to suit his 
" Agricultural Magazine." The Doctor, in the course 
of the conversation, mentioned a poem, called the 
" Epigoniad," by one Wilkie, an epic poem, in which 
there is not one tolerable good line all through, but 
every incident and speech borrowed from Homer. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 117 

George had been sitting inattentive seemingly to 
what was going on, — hatching of negative quantities, 
— when, suddenly, the name of his old friend Ho- 
mer stung his pericranicks, and, jumping up, he 
begged to know where he could meet with Wilkie's 
work. " It was a curious fact that there should be 
such an epic poem and he not know of it ; and he 
mitst get a copy of it, as he was going to touch pretty 
deeply upon the subject of the epic, — and he was sure 
there must be some things good in a poem of eight 
thousand hnes ! " I was pleased with this transient 
return of his reason and recurrence to his old ways 
of thinking ; it gave me great hopes of a recovery, 
which nothing but your book can completely insure. 
Pray come on Monday if you can, and stay your 
own time. I have a good large room, with two beds 
in it, in the handsomest of which thou shalt repose 
a-nights, and dream of spheroides. I hope you will 
understand by the nonsense of this letter that I am 
not melancholy at the thoughts of thy coming; I 
thought it necessary to add this, because you love 
precision. Take notice that our stay at Dyer's will 
not exceed eight o'clock, after which our pursuits 
will be our own. But indeed I think a little recrea- 
tion among the Bell Letters and poetry will do you 
some service in the interval of severer studies. I 
hope we shall fully discuss with George Dyer what I 
have never yet heard done to my satisfaction, — the 
reason of Dr. Johnson's malevolent strictures on the 
higher species of the Ode. 

C. Lamb. 



Il8 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

XXV. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

August 14, 1800. 
My head is playing all the tunes in the world, 
ringing such peals ! It has just finished the " Merry 
Christ Church Bells," and absolutely is beginning 
"Turn again, Whittington." Buz, buz, buz; bum, 
bum, bum ; wheeze, wheeze, wheeze ; fen, fen, fen ; 
tinky, tinky, tinky ; cr'annch. I shall certainly come 
to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too 
much for two days running. I find my moral sense 
in the last stage of a consumption, and my rehgion 
getting faint. This is disheartening, but T trust the 
devil will not overpower me. In the midst of this 
infernal torture Conscience is barking and yelping 
as loud as any of them, I have sat down to read 
over again, and I think I do begin to spy out some- 
thing with beauty and design in it. I perfectly ac- 
cede to all your alterations, and only desire that you 
had cut deeper, when your hand was in. 

• • • • • 

Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must an- 
nounce to you, who, doubtless, in your remote part 
of the island, have not heard tidings of so great a 
blessing, that George Dyer hath prepared two pon- 
derous volumes full of poetry and criticism. They 
impend over the town, and are threatened to fall in 
the winter. The first volume contains every sort of 
poetry except personal satire, which George, in his 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 119 

truly original prospectus, renounceth forever, whim- 
sically foisting the intention in between the price 
of his book and the proposed number of subscribers. 
(If I can, I will get you a copy of his handbill^ He 
has tried his vein in every species besides, — the 
Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic, and Akensidish 
more especially. The second volume is all criti- 
cism ; wherein he demonstrates to the entire satis- 
faction of the literary world, in a way that must 
silence all reply forever, that the pastoral was intro- 
duced by Theocritus and poUshed by Virgil and 
Pope j that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in 
couples in George's brain) have a good deal of poet- 
ical fire and true lyric genius; that Cowley was 
ruined by excess of wit (a warning to all moderns) ; 
that Charles Lloyd, Charles Lamb, and William 
Wordsworth, in later days, have struck the true 
chords of poesy. Oh, George, George, with a head 
uniformly wrong and a heart uniformly right, that I 
had power and might equal to my wishes ; then 
would I call the gentry of thy native island, and 
they should come in troops, flocking at the sound 
of thy prospectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall 
be first to stand in thy list of subscribers ! I can 
only put twelve shillings into thy pocket (which, I 
will answer for them, will not stick there long) out 
of a pocket almost as bare as thine. Is it not a pity 
so much fine writing should be erased? But, to tell 
the truth, I began to scent that I was getting into 
that sort of style which Longinus and Dionysius 
Halicarnassus fitly call "the affected." 

C. L. 



I20 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

XXVI. 

TO MANNING. 

August 22, 1800. 

Dear Manning, — You need not imagine any 
apology necessary. Your fine hare and fine birds 
(which just now are dangling by our kitchen blaze) 
discourse most eloquent music in your justification. 
You just nicked my palate ; for, with all due deco- 
rum and leave may it be spoken, my worship hath 
taken physic to-day, and being low and puling, re- 
quireth to be pampered. Foh ! how beautiful and 
strong those buttered onions come to my nose ! For 
you must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy 
from those materials which, duly compounded with 
a consistence of bread and cream (yclept bread- 
sauce), each to each giving double grace, do mu- 
tually illustrate and set off (as skilful gold-foils to 
rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, 
snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters 
of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal 
and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a 
man is the proper allotment in such cases) , yearneth 
sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing or so. 
I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London 
culinaric. 

George Dyer has introduced me to the table of 
an agreeable old gentleman, Dr. Anderson, who gives 
hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan 
lodge at Isleworth, where, in the middle of a street. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 1 21 

he has shot up a wall most preposterously before his 
small dwelling, which, with the circumstance of his 
taking several panes of glass out of bedroom win- 
dows (for air), causeth his neighbors to speculate 
strangely on the state of the good man's pericra- 
nicks. Plainly, he lives under the reputation of 
being deranged. George does not mind this cir- 
cumstance ; he rather likes him the better for it. 
The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins agricultural to poet- 
ical science, and has set George's brains mad about 
the old Scotch writers, Barbour, Douglas's ^neid, 
Blind Harry, etc. We returned home in a return 
postchaise (having dined with the Doctor) ; and 
George kept wondering and wondering, for eight or 
nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and striving 
to recollect the name, of a poet anterior to Barbour. 
I begged to know what was remaining of his works. 
" There is nothing extant of his works, sir ; but by 
all accounts he seems to have been a fine genius ! " 
This fine genius, without anything to show for it or 
any title beyond George's courtesy, without even a 
name, and Barbour and Douglas and Blind Harry 
now are the predominant sounds in George's pia 
mater, and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, 
and algebra, — the late lords of that illustrious lum- 
ber-room. Mark, he has never read any of these 
bucks, but is impatient till he reads them all, at the 
Doctor's suggestion. Poor Dyer ! his friends should 
be careful what sparks they let fall into such inflam- 
mable matter. 

Could I .have my will of the heathen, I would 
lock him up from all access of new ideas j I would 



122 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

exclude all critics that would not swear me first 
(upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with 
nothing but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds 
(the rightful aborigines of his brain), — Gray, Aken- 
side, and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as 
often as possible, there could be nothing painful, 
nothing distracting. 

God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot ! 

All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the 
sight ! 

Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent 
friends ! 

C. Lamb. 

XXVII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

August 26, 1800. 

George Dyer is the only literary character I am 
happily acquainted with. The oftener I see him, 
the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness 
itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of 
his death, I would write a novel on purpose to make 
George the hero. I could hit him off to a hair. 

George brought a Dr. Anderson ^ to see me. The 
Doctor is a very pleasant old man, a great genius 
for agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees with 
packthread, and boasts of having had disappoint- 
ments from ministers. The Doctor happened to 
mention an epic poem by one Wilkie, called the 

} See preceding Letter. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 123 

" Epigoniad," in which he assured us there is not 
one tolerable line from beginning to end, but all 
the characters, incidents, etc., verbally copied from 
Homer. George, who had been sitting quite inat- 
tentive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard 
the sound of Homer strike his pericraniks, than up 
he gets, and declares he must see that poem imme-. 
diately : where was it to be had ? An epic poem of 
eight thousand lines, and he not hear of it ! There 
must be some things good in it, and it was necessary 
he should see it, for he had touched pretty deeply 
upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. 
George had touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, 
I find ; he has also prepared a dissertation on the 
Drama, and the comparison of the English and Ger- 
man theatres. As I rather doubted his competency 
to do the latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies 
in the lyric species of composition, I questioned 
George what English plays he had read. I found 
that he had read Shakspeare (whom he calls an 
original, but irregular, genius), but it was a good 
while ago ; and he has dipped into Rowe and Ot- 
way, I suppose having found their names in John- 
son's Lives at full length; and upon this slender 
ground he has undertaken the task. He never 
seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Mar- 
lowe, Massinger, and the worthies of Dodsley's Col- 
lection ; but he is to read all these, to prepare him 
for bringing out his " Parallel " in the winter. I 
find he is also determined to vindicate poetry from 
the shackles which Aristotle and some others have 
imposed upon it, — which is very good-natured of 



124 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

him, and very necessary just now ! Now I am 
touching so deeply upon poetry, can I forget that 
I have just received from Cottle a magnificent copy 
of his Guinea Epic.^ Four-and-twenty books to 
read in the dog days ! I got as far as the Mad 
Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. Cottle's 
•genius strongly points him to the Pasto7'al, but his 
incUnations divert him perpetually from his calling. 
He imitates Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with 
his " Good morrow to ye, good master Lieutenant." 
Instead of a man, a woman, a daughter, he con- 
stantly writes " one a man," " one a woman," " one 
his daughter." Instead of the king, the hero, he 
constantly writes, " he the king," "he the hero," — 
two flowers of rhetoric palpably from the "Joan." 
But Mr. Cottle soars a higher pitch ; and when he 
is original, it is in a most original way indeed. 
His terrific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents, asps, 
spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of noth- 
ing, with adders' tongues for bannisters, — Good 
Heaven, what a brain he must have ! He puts as 
many plums in his pudding as my grandmother 
used to do ; and then his emerging from Hell's 
horrors into light, and treading on pure flats of this 
earth — for twenty-three books together ! 

C. L. 



1 Alfred. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 125 

XXVIII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

October 9, 1800. 
I SUPPOSE you have heard of the death of Amos 
Cottle. I paid a solemn visit of condolence to his 
brother, accompanied by George Dyer, of burlesque 
memory. I went, trembling, to see poor Cottle so 
immediately upon the event. He was in black, 
and his younger brother was also in black. Every- 
thing wore an aspect suitable to the respect due to 
the freshly dead. For some time after our entrance, 
nobody spake, till George modestly put in a question, 
whether ''Alfred" was likely to sell. This was 
Lethe to Cottle, and his poor face wet with tears, 
and his kind eye brightened up in a moment. Now 
I felt it was my cue to speak. I had to thank him 
for a present of a magnificent copy, and had prom- 
ised to send him my remarks, —the least thing I 
could do; so I ventured to suggest that I per- 
ceived a considerable improvement he had made in 
his first book since the state in which he first read it 
to me. Joseph, who till now had sat with his knees 
cowering in by the fireplace, wheeled about, and 
with great difficulty of body shifted the same round 
to the corner of a table where I was sitting, and 
first stationing one thigh over the other, which is 
his sedentary mood, and placidly fixing his benevo- 
lent face right against mine, waited my observations. 
At that moment it came strongly into my mind that 



126 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

I had got Uncle Toby before me, he looked so 
kind and so good. I could not say an unkind thing 
of *' Alfred." So I set my memory to work to recol- 
lect what was the name of Alfred's queen, and with 
some adroitness recalled the well-known sound to 
Cottle's ears of Alswitha. At that moment I could 
perceive that Cottle had forgot his brother was so 
lately become a blessed spirit. In the language of 
mathematicians, the author was as 9, the brother 
as I. I felt my cue, and strong pity working at 
the root, I went to work and beslabber'd " Alfred " 
with most unqualified praise, or only qualifying my 
praise by the occasional poUte interposition of an 
exception taken against trivial faults, slips, and hu- 
man imperfections, which, by removing the appear- 
ance of insincerity, did but in truth heighten the 
relish. Perhaps I might have spared that refine- 
ment, for Joseph was in a humor to hope and 
believe all things. What I said was beautifully sup- 
ported, corroborated, and confirmed by the stu- 
pidity of his brother on my left hand, and by 
George on my right, who has an utter incapacity of 
comprehending that there can be anything bad in 
poetry. All poems are good poems to George ; all 
men are fine geniuses. So what with my actual 
memory, of which I made the most, and Cottle's 
own helping me out, for I really had forgotten a 
good deal of " Alfred," I made shift to discuss the 
most essential parts entirely to the satisfaction of its 
author, who repeatedly declared that he loved noth- 
ing better than candid criticism. Was I a candid 
greyhound now for all this? or did I do right? I 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 127 

believe I did. The effect was luscious to my con- 
science. For all the rest of the evening Amos was 
no more heard of, till George revived the subject by 
inquiring whether some account should not be 
drawn up by the friends of the deceased to be in- 
serted in " Phillips's Monthly Obituary ; " adding, 
that Amos was estimable both for his head and 
heart, and would have made a fine poet if he had 
lived. To the expediency of this measure Cottle 
fully assented, but could not help adding that he 
always thought that the qualities of his brother's 
heart exceeded those of his head. I believe his 
brother, when living, had formed precisely the same 
idea of him ; and I apprehend the world will assent 
to both judgments. I rather guess that the broth- 
ers were poetical rivals. I judged so when I saw 
them together. Poor Cottle, I must leave him, 
after his short dream, to muse again upon his poor 
brother, for whom I am sure in secret he will yet 
shed many a tear. Now send me in return some 
Greta news. 

C. L. 

XXIX. 

TO MANNING. 

October 16, 1800. 
Dear Manning, — Had you written one week be- 
fore you did, I certainly should have obeyed your 
injunction; you should have seen me before my 
letter. I will explain to you my situation. There 
are six of us in one department. Two of us (within 



128 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 

these four days) are confined with severe fevers ; 
and two more, who belong to the Tower Mihtia, 
expect to have marching orders on Friday. Now, 
six are absolutely necessary. I have already asked 
and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of 
the feverites ; and with the other prospect before 
me, you may believe I cannot decently ask leave of 
absence for myself. All I can promise (and I do 
promise with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the con- 
trition of sinner Peter if I fail) [is] that I will come 
the very first spaj^e week, and go nowhere till I have 
been at Cambridge. No matter if you are in a 
state of pupilage when I come ; for I can employ 
myself in Cambridge very pleasantly in the morn- 
ings. Are there not libraries, halls, colleges, books, 
pictures, statues? I wish you had made London in 
your way. There is an exhibition quite uncommon 
in Europe, which could not have escaped yottr 
genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, and 
the thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last 
night by candlelight. We were ushered into a room 
very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man 
and woman and four boys live in this room, joint 
tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no 
remedy has been discovered for their bite. We 
walked into the middle, which is formed by a half- 
moon of wired boxes, all mansions oi snakes, — whip- 
snakes, thunder- snakes, pig-nose- snakes, American 
vipers, and this monster. He lies curled up in 
folds j and immediately a stranger enters (for he is 
used to the family, and sees them play at cards) he 
set up a rattle like a watchman's in London, or near 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 129 

as loud, and reared up a head, from the midst of 
these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and 
showed every sign a snake can show of irritation. 
I had the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with 
my finger, and the devil flew at me with his toad- 
mouth wide open : the inside of his mouth is quite 
white. I had got my finger away, nor could he 
well have bit me with his big mouth, which would 
have been certain death in five minutes. But it 
frightened me so much that I did not recover my 
voice for a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, 
that he was secured. You would have forgot too, 
for 't is incredible how such a monster can be con- 
fined in small gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of 
snakes in the night. I wish to Heaven you could 
see it. He absolutely swelled with passion to the 
bigness of a large thigh. I could not retreat with- 
out infringing on another box, and just behind, a 
little devil, not an inch from my back, had got his 
nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through 
the bars ! He was soon taught better manners. 
All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror ; 
but this monster, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up 
the impression of the rest. He opened his cursed 
mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his head 
was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, and felt 
pains all over my body with the fright. 

I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer 
read out one book of "The Farmer's Boy." I 
thought it rather childish. No doubt, there is orig- 
inality in it (which, in your self-taught geniuses, is 
a most rare quality, they generally getting hold of 

9 



I30 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

some bad models in a scarcity of books, and form- 
ing their taste on them), but no selection. All 'vs> 
described. 

Mind, I have only heard read one book. 
Yours sincerely, 

Philo-Snake, 

C. L. 

XXX. 

TO MANNING. 

November 3, 1800. 
Ecquid meditatiir Archimedes ? What is Euclid 
doing? What has happened to learned Trismegist? 
Doth he take it in ill part that his humble friend 
did not comply with his courteous invitation ? Let 
it suffice, I could not come. Are impossibilities 
nothing? — be they abstractions of the intellects, 
or not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities? 
nuts in the Will's mouth too hard for her to crack? 
brick and stone walls in her way, which she can by 
no means eat through? sore lets, impedimenta via- 
7'U7fi, no thoroughfares? racemi nimiu7n alte pen- 
defites ? Is the phrase classic ? I allude to the 
grapes in ^sop, which cost the fox a strain, and 
gained the world an aphorism. Observe the super- 
scription of this letter. In adapting the size of the 
letters which constitute yotir name and Mr. Crisp'' s 
name respectively, I had an eye to your different 
stations in life. 'Tis really curious, and must be 
soothing to an aristocrat. I wonder it has never 
been hit on before my time. I have made an ac- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 131 

quisition latterly of a pleasant hajtd, one Rickman,^ 
to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, — not 
the most flattering auspices under which one man 
can be introduced to another. George brings all 
sorts of people together, setting up a sort of agra- 
rian law, or common property, in matter of soci- 
ety ; but for once he has done me a great pleasure, 
while he was only pursuing a principle, as ignes 
fatiii may light you home. This Rickman lives in 
our Buildings, immediately opposite our house ; the 
finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten 
o'clock, — cold bread-and-cheese time, — just in 
the WIS king time of the night, when you wi's/i for 
somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a 
probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too 
early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable 
time. He is a most pleasant hand, — a fine, rat- 
tling fellow, has gone through life laughing at sol- 
emn apes ; himself hugely literate, oppressively full 
of information in all stuff of conversation, from mat- 
ter of fact to Xenophon and Plato ; can talk Greek 
with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with 
George Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with 
anybody; a great farmer, somewhat concerned in 
an agricultural magazine ; reads no poetry but 
Shakspeare, very intimate with Southey, but never 
reads his poetry ; relishes George Dyer, thoroughly 
penetrates into the ridiculous wherever found, un- 
derstands the ^rsf time (a great desideratum in 

1 John Rickman, clerk-assistant at the table of the House 
of Commons, an eminent statistician, and the intimate friend 
of Lamb, Southey, and others of their set 



132 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

common minds) , — you need never twice speak 
to him ; does not want explanations, translations, 
limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you 
make an assertion ; up to anything, down to every- 
thing, — whatever sapit honiinem. A perfect man. 
All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, 
and has put me to a little trouble to select, only 
proves how impossible it is to describe a pleasant 
hand. You must see Rickman to know him, for he 
is a species in one, — a new class ; an exotic, any 
slip of which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. 
The clearest-headed fellow ; fullest of matter, with 
least verbosity. If there be any alloy in my fortune 
to have met with such a man, it is that he com- 
monly divides his time between town and country, 
having some foolish family ties at Christchurch, by 
which means he can only gladden our London 
hemisphere with returns of light. He is now going 
for six weeks. 



XXXI. 

TO MANNING. 

November 28, 1800 

Dear Manning, — I have received a very kind 
invitation from Lloyd and Sophia to go and spend 
a month with them at the Lakes. Now, it fortu- 
nately happens (which is so seldom the case) that 
I have spare cash by me enough to answer the 
expenses of so long a journey ; and I am deter- 
mined to get away from the office by some means. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 133 

The purpose of this letter is to request of you (my 
dear friend) that you will not take it unkind if I 
decline my proposed visit to Cambridge for the 
present. Perhaps I shall be able to take Cambridge 
in my way, going or coming. I need not describe 
to you the expectations which such an one as my- 
self, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed 
of a tour to the Lakes. Consider Grasmere ! Am- 
bleside ! Wordsworth ! Coleridge ! Hills, woods, 
lakes, and mountains, to the devil ! I will eat snipes 
with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess, confess, 
a bite. 

P. S. — I think you named the i6th ; but was it 
not modest of Lloyd to send such an invitation ! 
It shows his knowledge of money and time. I 
would be loth to think he meant 

" Ironic satire sidelong sklented 
On my poor pursie." ^ 

For my part, with reference to my friends north- 
ward, I must confess that I am not romance-bit 
about Natttre, The earth and sea and sky (when 
all is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If the 
inmates be courteous, and good liquors flow like the 
conduits at an old coronation, if they can talk sen- 
sibly and feel properly, I have no need to stand 
staring upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained 
my friend's purse-strings in the purchase), nor his 
five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old Nabbs 
the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). 
Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the fur- 
niture of my world, — eye-pampering, but satisfies 

i Burns. 



134 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, the- 
atres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkUng 
with pretty faces of industrious milUners, neat semp- 
stresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind coun- 
ters lying, authors in the street with spectacles, 
George Dyers (you may know them by their gait), 
lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks' and silversmiths' 
shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of 
coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchman at night, 
with bucks reeling home drunk ; if you happen to 
wake at midnight, cries of " Fire ! " and " Stop 
thief!" inns of court, with their learned air, and 
halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges ; 
old book-stalls, Jeremy Taylors, Burtons on Melan- 
choly, and Religio Medicis on every stall. These 
are thy pleasures, O London with-the-many-sins ! 

O City abounding in , for these may Keswick 

and her giant brood go hang ! 

C. L. 

XXXII. 

TO MANNING. 

December 27, 1800. 
At length George Dyer's phrenitis has come to 
a crisis \ he is raging and furiously mad. I waited 
upon the Heathen, Thursday was a se'nnight ; the 
first symptom which struck my eye and gave me in- 
controvertible proof of the fatal truth was a pair of 
nankeen pantaloons four times too big for him, 
which the said Heathen did pertinaciously affirm to 
be new. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 135 

They were absolutely ingrained with the accumu- 
lated dirt of ages ; but he affirmed them to be 
clean. He was going to visit a lady that was nice 
about those things, and that 's the reason he wore 
nankeen that day. And then he danced, and 
capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons, 
and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer 
about his poetic loins ; anon he gave it loose to the 
zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies 
through every crevice, door, window, or wainscot, 
expressly formed for the exclusion of such imperti- 
nents. Then he caught at a proof-sheet, and catched 
up a laundress's bill instead ; made a dart at Bloom- 
field's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I 
could not bring him to one direct reply ; he could 
not maintain his jumping mind in a right line for 
the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He 
must go to the printer's immediately, — the most 
unlucky accident ; he had struck off five hundred 
impressions of his Poems, which were ready for de- 
livery to subscribers, and the Preface must all be 
expunged. There were eighty pages of Preface, 
and not till that morning had he discovered that in 
the very first page of said Preface he had set out 
with a principle of criticism fundamentally wrong, 
which vitiated all his following reasoning. The Pre- 
face must be expunged, although it cost him ;£^30, 
— the lowest calculation, taking in paper and print- 
ing ! In vain have his real friends remonstrated 
against this Midsummer madness ; George is as 
obstinate as a Primitive Christian, and wards and 
parries off all our thrusts with one unanswerable 



136 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

fence, — " Sir, it 's of great consequence that the 
world is not misled!''^ 

Man of many snipes, I will sup with thee, Deo 
volente et diabolo nolente, on Monday night the 
5 th of January, in the new year, and crush a cup to 
the infant century. 

A word or two of my progress. Embark at six 
o'clock in the morning, with a fresh gale, on a 
Cambridge one-decker; very cold till eight at 
night ; land at St. Mary's lighthouse, muffins and 
coffee upon table (or any other curious produc- 
tion of Turkey or both Indies), snipes exactly at 
nine, punch to commence at ten, with argumejit ; 
difference of opinion is expected to take place about 
eleven ; perfect unanimity, with some haziness and 
dimness, before twelve. N. B. — My single affec- 
tion is not so singly wedded to snipes ; but the 
curious and epicurean eye would also take a pleasure 
in beholding a delicate and well-chosen assortment 
of teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing 
flesh of geese wild and tame, nightingales' brains, 
the sensorium of a young sucking-pig, or any other 
Christmas dish, which I leave to the judgment of 
you and the cook of Gonville. 

C. Lamb. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 137 

XXXIII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

(End of 1800 ) 
I SEND you, in this parcel, my play, which I beg 
you to present in my name, with my respect and 
love, to Wordsworth and his sister. You blame us 
for giving your direction to Miss Wesley; the 
woman has been ten times after us about it, and we 
gave it her at last, under the idea that no further 
harm would ensue, but she would once write to you, 
and you would bite your lips and forget to answer 
it, and so it would end. You read us a dismal 
homily upon ''Reahties." We know quite as well 
as you do what are shadows and what are realities. 
You, for instance, when you are over your fourth or 
fifth jorum, chirping about old school occurrences, 
are the best of realities. Shadows are cold, thin 
things, that have no warmth or grasp in them. 
Miss Wesley and her friend, and a tribe of author- 
esses, that come after you here daily, and, in defect 
of you, hive and cluster upon us, are the shadows. 
You encouraged that mopsey. Miss Wesley, to dance 
after you, in the hope of having her nonsense put 
into a nonsensical Anthology. We have pretty well 
shaken her off, by that simple expedient of referring 
her to you ; but there are more burrs in the wind. 
I came home t'other day from business, hungry as a 
hunter, to dinner, with nothing, I am sure, of the 
author but hunger about me, and whom found I 



138 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

closeted with Mary but a friend of this Miss Wesley, 
one Miss Benje, or Bengey/ — I don't know how 
she spells her name. I just came in time enough, I 
believe, luckily, to prevent them from exchanging 
vows of eternal friendship. It seems she is one of 
your authoresses, that you first foster, and then 
upbraid us with. But I forgive you. " The rogue 
has given me potions to make me love him." Well ; 
go she would not, nor step a step over our threshold, 
till we had promised to come and drink tea with her 
next night. I had never seen her before, and could 
not tell who the devil it was that was so familiar. We 
went, however, not to be impolite. Her lodgings 
are up two pairs of stairs in East Street. Tea and 
coffee and macaroons — a kind of cake — I much 
love. We sat down. Presently Miss Benje broke 
the silence by declaring herself quite of a different 
opinion from DTsraeh, who supposes the differences 
of human intellect to be the mere effect of organi- 
zation. She begged to know my opinion. I at- 
tempted to carry it off with a pun upon organ ; but 
that went off very flat. She immediately conceived 
a very low opinion of my metaphysics ; and turning 
round to Mary, put some question to her in French, 
— possibly having heard that neither Mary nor I 
understood French. The explanation that took 
place occasioned some embarrassment and much 
wondering. She then fell into an insulting conver- 
sation about the comparative genius and merits of 
all modern languages, and concluded with asserting 

1 Miss Elizabeth Benger See " Dictionary of National 
Biography," iv. 221. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 139 

that the Saxon was esteemed the purest dialect in 
Germany. From thence she passed into the subject 
of poetry, where I, who had hitherto sat mute and a 
hearer only, humbly hoped I might now put in a 
word to some advantage, seeing that it was my own 
trade in a manner. But I was stopped by a round 
assertion that no good poetry had appeared since 
Dr. Johnson's time. It seems the Doctor had sup- 
pressed many hopeful geniuses that way by the 
severity of his critical strictures in his " Lives of the 
Poets." I here ventured to question the fact, and 
was beginning to appeal to names ; but I was assured 
''it was certainly the case." Then we discussed 
Miss More's book on education, which I had never 
read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of Miss Ben- 
gey's friends, has found fault with one of Miss 
More's metaphors. Miss More has been at some 
pains to vindicate herself, — in the opinion of Miss 
Bengey, not without success. It seems the Doctor 
is invariably against the use of broken or mixed 
metaphor, which he reprobates against the authority 
of Shakspeare himself. We next discussed the 
question whether Pope was a poet. I find Dr. 
Gregory is of opinion he was not, though Miss 
Seward does not at all concur with him in this. We 
then sat upon the comparative merits of the ten 
translations of " Pizarro," and Miss Bengey, or 
Benje, advised Mary to take two of them home ; she 
thought it might afford her some pleasure to com- 
pare them verbatim ; which we declined. It being 
now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons were again 
served round, and we parted, with a promise to go 



I40 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

again next week, and meet the Miss Porters, who, it 
seems, have heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish 
to meet us, because we are his friends. I have 
been preparing for the occasion. I crowd cotton 
in my ears. I read all the reviews and magazines of 
the past month against the dreadful meeting, and I 
hope by these means to cut a tolerable second-rate 
figure. 

Pray let us have no more complaints about 
shadows. We are in a fair way, through you, to 
surfeit sick upon them. 

Our loves and respects to your host and hostess. 
Our dearest love to Coleridge. 

Take no thought about your proof-sheets; they 
shall be done as if Woodfall himself did them. Pray 
send us word of Mrs. Coleridge and httle David 
Hartley, your little reality. 

Farewell, dear Substance. Take no umbrage at 
anything I have written. 

C. Lamb, Umbra. 



XXXIV. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

January, i8oi. 
Thanks for your letter and present. I had al- 
ready borrowed your second volume.-^ What pleases 
one most is "The Song of Lucy." Simon's sickly 

^ Of the " Lyrical Ballads," then just published. For cer- 
tain results of Lamb's strictures in this letter, see Letter 
xxxvii. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 141 

Daughter, in "The Sexton," made me cry. Next 
to these are the description of these continuous 
echoes in the story of "Joanna's Laugh," where the 
mountains and all the scenery absolutely seem alive ; 
and that fine Shakspearian character of the " happy 
man " in the " Brothers," — 

" That creeps about the fields, 
Following his fancies by the hour, to bring 
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles 
Into his face, until the setting sun 
Write Fool upon his forehead! " 

I will mention one more, — the delicate and curi- 
ous feeling in the wish for the " Cumberland Beg- 
gar" that he may have about him the melody of 
birds, although he hear them not. Here the mind 
knowingly passes a fiction upon herself, first substi- 
tuting her own feeling for the Beggar's, and in the 
same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with 
the wish. The " Poet's Epitaph " is disfigured, to 
my taste, by the common satire upon parsons and 
lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of 
"pin-point," in the sixth stanza. All the rest is 
eminently good, and your own. I will just add that 
it appears to me a fault in the " Beggar " that the 
instructions conveyed in it are too direct, and like 
a lecture : they don't slide into the mind of the 
reader while he is imagining no such matter. An 
intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told, 
" I will teach you how to think upon this subject." 
This fault, if I am right, is in a ten-thousandth worse 
degree to be found in Sterne, and in many novelists 
and modern poets, who continually put a sign-post 



142 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

up to show where you are to feel. They set out 
with assuming their readers to be stupid, — very dif- 
ferent from " Robinson Crusoe," the " Vicar of 
Wakefield," " Roderick Random," and other beau- 
tiful, bare narratives. There is implied an un- 
written compact between author and reader : " I 
will tell you a story, and I suppose you will under- 
stand it." Modern novels, "St. Leons " and the 
like, are full of such flowers as these, — " Let not 
my reader suppose ; " " Imagine, if you can, mod- 
est," etc. I will here have done with praise and 
blame. I have written so much only that you may 
not think I have passed over your book without 
observation. ... I am sorry that Coleridge has 
christened his " Ancient Marinere," a " Poet's Reve- 
rie ; " it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver's decla- 
ration that he is not a lion, but only the scenical 
representation of a lion. What new idea is gained 
by this title but one subversive of all credit — which 
the tale should force upon us — of its truth ! 

For me, I was never so affected with any human 
tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed 
with it for many days. I dislike all the miraculous 
part of it ; but the feelings of the man under the 
operation of such scenery, dragged me along like 
Tom Pipe's magic whistle. I totally differ from 
your idea that the " Marinere " should have had a 
character and a profession. This is a beauty in 
" Gulliver's Travels," where the mind is kept in a 
placid state of little wonderments ; but the " An- 
cient Marinere " undergoes such trials as overwhelm 
and bury all individuality or memory of what he 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 143 

was, — like the state of a man in a bad dream, one 
terrible peculiarity of which is, that all conscious- 
ness of personality is gone. Your other observation 
is, I think as well, a little unfounded : the " Mari- 
nere," from being conversant in supernatural events, 
has acquired a supernatural and strange cast of 
phrase, eye, appearance, etc., which frighten the 
"wedding guest." You will excuse my remarks, 
because I am hurt and vexed that you should think 
it necessary, with a prose apology, to open the eyes 
of dead men that cannot see. 

To sum up a general opinion of the second vol- 
ume, I do not feel any one poem in it so forcibly 
as the " Ancient Marinere " and " The Mad Mother," 
and the " Lines at Tintern Abbey '' in the first. 

C. L. 



XXXV. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

January 30, 180 1. 
I OUGHT before this to have replied to your very 
kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and 
your sister I could gang anywhere ; but I am afraid 
whether I shall ever be able to afford so desperate 
a journey. Separate from the pleasure of your com- 
pany, I don't much care if I never see a mountain 
in my life. 1 have passed all my days in London, 
until I have formed as many and intense local at- 
tachments as any of you mountaineers can have 
done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the 
Strand and Fleet Street ; the innumerable trades, 



144 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

tradesmen, and customers ; coaches, wagons, play- 
houses ; all the bustle and wickedness round about 
Covent Garden ; the very women of the town ; the 
watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles ; life awake, if 
you awake, at all hours of the night ; the impossi- 
bihty of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, the 
very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and 
pavements ; the print-shops, the old-book stalls, 
parsons cheapening books ; coffee-houses, steams 
of soups from kitchens ; the pantomimes, London 
itself a pantomime and a masquerade, — all these 
things work themselves into my mind, and feed me 
without a power of satiating me. The wonder of 
these sights impels me into night-walks about her 
crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the mot- 
ley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All 
these emotions must be strange to you ; so are 
your rural emotions to me. But consider what must 
I have been doing all my life, not to have lent great 
portions of my heart with usury to such scenes? 

My attachments are all local, purely local, — I 
have no passion (or have had none since I was in 
love, and then it was the spurious engendering of 
poetry and books) to groves and valleys. The 
rooms where I was born, the furniture which has 
been before my eyes all my life, a bookcase which 
has followed me about like a faithful dog (only 
exceeding him in knowledge), wherever I have 
moved ; old chairs, old tables ; streets, squares, 
where I have sunned myself; my old school, — 
these are my mistresses. Have I not enough with- 
out your mountains? I do not envy you. I should 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 145 

pity you, did I not know that the mind will make 
friends with anything. Your sun and moon, and 
skies and hills and lakes, affect me no more or 
scarcely come to be in more venerable characters, 
than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, 
where I might live with handsome visible objects. 
I consider the clouds above me but as a roof beau- 
tifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind, and 
at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a con- 
noisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. 
So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the 
beauties of Nature, as they have been confidently 
called j so ever fresh and green and warm are all 
the inventions of men and assemblies of men in 
this great city. I should certainly have kughed 
with dear Joanna. 

Give my kindest love and my sister's to D. and 
yourself. And a kiss from me to little Barbara 
Lewthwaite.-^ Thank you for liking my play ! 

C.L. 

XXXVI. 

TO MANNING. 

February f 1801. 

I AM going to change my lodgings, having re- 
ceived a hint that it would be agreeable, at our 
Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most 
delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand 
a-tiptoe) over the Thames and Surrey Hills, at the 

1. The child in Wordsworth's " The Pet Lamb." 
10 



146 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Upper end of King's Bench Walks, in the Temple. 
There I shall have all the privacy of a house without 
the encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my 
friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse 
with my immortal mind ; for my present lodgings 
resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my 
acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have re- 
sided in town. Like the country mouse, that had 
tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nib- 
bling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse- 
traps and time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be 
as airy, up four pair of stairs, as in the country; 
and in a garden, in the midst of enchanting, more 
than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest 
drab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing trades- 
man, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, 
James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. 
Oh, her lamps of a night ; her rich goldsmiths, print- 
shops, toy-shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastry- 
cooks ; St. Paul's Churchyard ; the Strand ; Exeter 
'Change ; Charing Cross, with a man upon a black 
horse ! These are thy gods, O London ! Ain't 
you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? 
Had not you better come and set up here ? You 
can't think what a difference. All the streets and 
pavements are pure gold, I warrant you, — at least, 
I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that 
metal : a mind that loves to be at home in crowds. 
'T is half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober people 
ought to be a-bed. Between you and me, the L. 
Ballads are but drowsy performances. 

C. Lamb (as you may guess) . 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 147 



XXXVII. 



TO MANNING. 



February 15, 1801. 
I HAD need be cautious henceforward what opin- 
ion I give of the " Lyrical Ballads." All the North 
of England are in a turmoil. Cumberland and 
Westmoreland have already declared a state of war. 
I lately received from Wordsworth a copy of the 
second volume, accompanied by an acknowledg- 
ment of having received from me many months 
since a copy of a certain tragedy, with excuses for not 
having made any acknowledgment sooner, it being 
owing to an " almost insurmountable aversion from 
letter-writing." This letter I answered in due form 
and time, and enumerated several of the passages 
which had most affected me, adding, unfortunately, 
that no single piece had moved me so forcibly 
as the "Ancient Mariner," "The Mad Mother," 
or the "Lines at Tintern Abbey." The Post did 
not sleep a moment. I received almost instantane- 
ously a long letter of four sweating pages from my 
Reluctant Letter- Writer, the purport of which was 
that he was sorry his second volume had not given me 
more pleasure (Devil a hint did I give that it had 
not pleased me), and "was compelled to wish that 
my range of sensibility was more extended, being 
obliged to believe that I should receive large in- 
fluxes of happiness and happy thoughts" (I suppose 



148 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

from the L. B.), — with a deal of stuff about a cer- 
tain Union of Tenderness and Imagination, which, 
in the sense he used Imagination, was not the char- 
acteristic of Shakspeare, but which Mihon pos- 
sessed in a degree far exceeding other Poets ; which 
union, as the highest species of poetry, and chiefly 
deserving that name, " he was most proud to aspire 
to ; " then illustrating the said union by two quota- 
tions from his own second volume (which I had been 
so unfortunate as to miss.) First specimen : A father 

addresses his son : — 

" When thou 
First earnest into the World, as it befalls 
To new-born infants, thou didst sleep away 
Two days ; and blessings from thy father^ s tongue 
The ?i fell upon thee.'' 

The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed, 
"This passage, as combining in an extraordinary 
degree that union of tenderness and imagination 
which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the 
best I ever wrote." 

Second specimen : A youth, after years of ab- 
sence, revisits his native place, and thinks (as most 
people do) that there has been strange alteration in 

his absence, — 

" And that the rocks 
And everlasting hills themselves were changed." 

You see both these are good poetry ; but after 
one has been reading Shakspeare twenty of the 
best years of one's life, to have a fellow start up and 
prate about some unknown quality which Shak- 
speare possessed in a degree inferior to Milton and 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 149 

somebody else I This was not to be all my castiga- 
tion. Coleridge, who had not written to me for 
some months before, starts up from his bed of sick- 
ness to reprove me for my tardy presumption j four 
long pages, equally sweaty and more tedious, came 
from him, assuring me that when the works of a 
man of true genius, such as W. undoubtedly was, 
do not please me at first sight, I should expect the 
fault to He " in me, and not in them," etc. What 
am I to do with such people? I certainly shall 
write them a very merry letter. Writing to you, I 
may say that the second volume has no such pieces 
as the three I enumerated. It is full of original 
thinking and an observing mind ; but it does not 
often make you laugh or cry. It too artfully aims 
at simplicity of expression. And you sometimes 
doubt if simplicity be not a cover for poverty. The 
best piece in it I will send you, being short. I 
have grievously offended my friends in the North 
by declaring my undue preference \ but I need 
not fear you. 

" She dwelt among the untrodden ways 
Beside the Springs of Dove, — 
A maid whom there were few {sic) to praise, 
And very few to love. 

" A violet, by a mossy stone 
Half hidden from the eye, 
Fair as a star when only one 
Is shining in the sky. 

" She lived unknown ; and few could know 
When Lucy ceased to be; 
But she is in the grave, and oh, 
The difference to me ! " 



150 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

This is choice and genuine, and so are many, 
many more. But one does not Hke to have 'em 
rammed down one's throat. " Pray take it, — it's 
very good ; let me help you, — eat faster." 



XXXVIII. 

TO MANNING. 

September 24, 1802 
My dear Manning, — Since the date of my last 
letter, I have been a traveller. A strong desire 
seized me of visiting remote regions. My first im- 
pulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial 
objection to my aspiring mind that I did not 
understand a word of the language, since I cer- 
tainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and 
.equally certainly never intend to learn the language ; 
therefore that could be no objection. However, I 
am very glad I did not go, because you had left 
Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I be- 
lieve Stoddart promising to go with me another year 
prevented that plan. My next scheme (for to my 
restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed 
of thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak in Der- 
byshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without 
breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indeli- 
cate. And my final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. 
I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Cole- 
ridge any notice ; for my time, being precious, did 
not admit of it. He received us with all the hospi- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 151 

tality in the world, and gave up his time to show us 
all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a 
small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable 
house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of moun- 
tains, — great floundering bears and monsters they 
seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the 
evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, 
in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which trans- 
muted all the mountains into colors, purple, etc. We 
thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went 
off (as it never came again ; while we stayed, we had 
no more fine sunsets) ; and we entered Coleridge's 
comfortable study just in the dusk, when the moun- 
tains were all dark, with clouds upon their heads. 
Such an impression I never received from objects of 
sight before, nor do I suppose that I can ever again. 
Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, etc. 
I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, 
like an intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed 
for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen 
in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire 
in his study, which is a large, antique, ill-shaped 
room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played 
upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered 
folios, an ^olian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, 
etc. ; and all looking out upon the last fading view 
of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren. What 
a night ! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which 
time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed 
a day or two with the Clarksons (good people and 
most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day 
and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were 



152 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 

gone to Calais. They have since been in London, 
and passed much time with us : he has now gone 
into Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen 
Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where 
the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end 
of Ulswater, — I forget the name,i — to which we 
travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of 
Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of 
Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. 
In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a 
thing as that which tourists call romantic, which I 
very much suspected before ; they make such a 
spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets 
around them, till they give as dim a light as at four 
o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumi- 
nation. Mary was excessively tired when she got 
about half way up Skiddaw ; but we came to a cold 
rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, 
running over cold stones), and with the reinforce- 
ment of a draught of cold water she surmounted it 
most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the 
bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all 
about and about, making you giddy ; and then Scot- 
land afar off, and the border countries so famous in 
song and ballad ! It was a day that will stand out 
like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am 
returned (I have now been come home near three 
weeks; I was a month out), and you cannot con- 
ceive the degradation I felt at first, from being ac- 
customed to wander free as air among mountains, 
and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any 

1 Patterdale. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 153 

one, to come home and work. I felt very little. 
I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But 
that is going off, and I find I shall conform in time 
to that state of life to which it has pleased God to 
call me. Besides, after all, Fleet Street and the 
Strand are better places to live in for good and all 
than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those 
great places where I wandered about, participating 
in their greatness. After all, I could not live in 
Skiddaw. I could spend a year, — two, three years 
among them ; but I must have a prospect of seeing 
Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should 
mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a 
fine creature. 

My habits are changing, I think, — /. e., from 
drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or 
not, remains to be proved. I shall certainly be 
more happy in a morning; but whether I shall 
not sacrifice the fat and the marrow and the kid- 
neys, — /. <?., the night, — glorious, care-drowning 
night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our 
mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent 
and fiat to bright and brilliant? O Manning, if I 
should have formed a diabolical resolution, by the 
time you come to England, of not admitting any 
spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest 
on such shameworthy terms ? Is life, with such lim- 
itations, worth trying ? The truth is, that my liquors 
bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who 
consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. 
Gothard ; but it is just now nearest my heart. 



154 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

XXXIX. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

October 23, 1802. 

I READ daily your political essays. I was particu- 
larly pleased with "Once a Jacobin;" though the 
argument is obvious enough, the style was less swell- 
ing than your things sometimes are, and it was plaus- 
ible ad populum. A vessel has just arrived from 
Jamaica with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. 
He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course 
was rapid, and he had been very foolish ; but I be- 
lieve there was more of kindness and warmth in him 
than in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The 
annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the 
London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with 
them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all 
by the singular foppishness of his dress. When 
men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a 
noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had 
been wise or silly in their lifetime. 

I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's books please. 
" Goody Two Shoes " is almost out of print. Mrs. 
Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of 
the nursery ; and the shopman at Newberry's hardly 
deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of 
a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and 
Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowl- 
edge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books con- 
vey, it seems, must come to the child in the shape 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 155 

of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned 
with conceit of his own powers when he has learned 
that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a 
horse, and such like ; instead of that beautiful inter- 
est in wild tales which made the child a man, while 
all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger 
than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no 
less in the little walks of children than with men. 
Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? 
Think what you would have been now, if instead of 
being fed with tales and old wives' fables in child- 
hood, you had been crammed with geography and 
natural history ! 

Hang them ! — I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, 
those blights and blasts of all that is human in man 
and child. 

As to the translations, let me do two or three 
hundred lines, and then do you try the nostrums 
upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go 
down, I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could 
but get ^50 a year only, in addition to what I 
have, I should live in affluence. 

Have you anticipated it, or could not you give 
a parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, particularly 
as to the contrast in their deeds affecting foreign 
States? Cromwell's interference for the Albigenses, 
B[onaparte]'s against the Swiss. Then religion 
would come in ; and Milton and you could rant 
about our countrymen of that period. This is a 
hasty suggestion, the more hasty because I want my 
supper. I have just finished Chapman's Homer. 
Did you ever read it? It has most the continuous 



156 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

power of interesting you all along, like a rapid 
original, of any, and in the uncommon excellence of 
the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any 
of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and ca- 
pable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's 
ponderous blank verse detains you every step with 
some heavy Miltonism ; Chapman gallops off with 
you his own free pace. Take a simile, for example. 
The council breaks up, — 

" Being abroad, the earth was overlaid 
With flockers to them, that came forth ; as when of frequent 

bees 
Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees 
Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new 
From forth their sweet nest ; as their store, still as it faded, 

grew, 
And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring, 
They still crowd out so : this flock here, that there, belaboring 
The loaded flowers. So," etc. 

What endless egression of phrases the dog com- 
mands ! 

Take another, — Agamemnon, wounded, bearing 
his wound heroically for the sake of the army (look 
below) to a woman in labor : — 

"He with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic 
wreak 

On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did 
break 

Thro' his cleft veins : but when the wound was quite ex- 
haust and crude. 

The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. 

As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a laboring 
dame. 

Which the divine Ilithiae, that rule the painful frame 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 15 7 

Of human childbirth, pour on her ; the Ilithiae that are 
The daughters of Saturnia ; with whose extreme repair 
The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives ; 
With thought, it must be, His love's fruit, the end for which 

she lives ; 
The mean to make herself new born, what comforts will re- 
dound ! 
So," etc. 

I will tell you more about Chapman and his pecu- 
Uarities in my next. I am much interested in him. 
Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos's, 

C. L. 



XL. 

TO MANNING. 

November, 1802. 

My dear Manning, — I must positively write, or 
I shall miss you at Toulouse. I sit here like a 
decayed minute-hand (I lie ; that does not sit), and 
being myself the exponent of no time, take no 
heed how the clocks about me are going. You 
possibly by this time may have explored all Italy, 
and toppled, unawares, into Etna, while you went 
too near those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn- 
out chaps of hell, — while I am meditating a quies- 
cent letter to the honest postmaster at Toulouse. 
But in case you should not have been/^/(? de se, this 
is to tell you that your letter was quite to my palate ; 
in particular your just remarks upon Industry, 
cursed Industry (though indeed you left me to 
explore the reason), were highly relishing. 

I've often wished I lived in the Golden Age, 



158 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

before doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got 
into the world. Now, as Joseph Cottle, a Bard of 
Nature, sings, going up Malvern Hills, — 

" How steep, how painful the ascent ! 
It needs the evidence of close deduction 
To know that ever I shall gain the top," 

You must know that Joe is lame, so that he had 
some reason for so singing. These two lines, I 
assure you, are taken toiide^n Uteris from a very 
popular poem. Joe is also an epic poet as well as 
a descriptive, and has written a tragedy, though 
both his drama and epopoiea are strictly descriptive, 
and chiefly of the beauties of nature, for Joe thinks 
man, with all his passions and frailties, not a proper 
subject of the drama. Joe's tragedy hath the fol- 
lowing surpassing speech in it. Some king is told 
that his enemy has engaged twelve archers to come 
over in a boat from an enemy's country and way-lay 
him ; he thereupon pathetically exclaims, — 

*' Twelve, dost thou say ? Curse on those dozen villains ! " 

Cottle read two or three acts out to us, very gravely 
on both sides, till he came to this heroic touch, — 
and then he asked what we laughed at? I had no 
more muscles that day. A poet that chooses to 
read out his own verses has but a limited power 
over you. There is a bound where his authority 
ceases. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 159 

XLI. 

TO MANNING. 

February 19, 1803. 
My dear Manning, — The general scope of your 
letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some 
particular points raised a scruple. For God's sake, 
don't think any more of " Independent Tartary." ^ 
What are you to do among such Ethiopians? Is 
there no lineal descendant of Prester John ? Is the 
chair empty? Is the sword unswayed? Depend 
upon it, they '11 never make you their king as long 
as any branch of that great stock is remaining. I 
tremble for your Christianity. They will certainly 
circumcise you. Read Sir John Mandeville's trav- 
els to cure you, or come over to England. There 
is a Tartar man now exhibiting at Exeter 'Change. 
Come and talk with him, and hear what he says 
first. Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen 
of his countrymen ! But perhaps the best thing 
you can do is to try to get the idea out of your 
head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every 
night, after you have said your prayers, the words 
*' Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary," two 
or three times, and associate with them the idea of 
oblivion ('tis Hartley's method with obstinate me- 
mories) ; or say " Independent, Independent, have 
I not already got an independence ? " That was 

1 Manning had evidently written to Lamb as to his cher- 
ished project of exploring remoter China and Thibet. 



i6o LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

a clever way of the old Puritans, — pun-divinity. 
My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be 
to bury such pai-ts in heathen countries, among 
nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people ! 
Some say they are cannibals ; and then conceive 
a Tartar fellow eating my friend, and adding the 
cool jiialignity of mustard and vinegar ! I am 
afraid 't is the reading of Chaucer has misled you ; 
his foolish stories about Cambuscan and the ring, 
and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are no 
such things, — 't is all the poet's invention ; but if 
there were such darling things as old Chaucer sings, 
I would up behind you on the horse of brass, and 
frisk off for Prester John's country. But these are 
all tales ; a horse of brass never flew, and a king's 
daughter never talked with birds ! The Tartars 
really are a cold, insipid, smouchy set. You '11 be 
sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. 
Pray try and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the 
counsel is Horace's ; 't was none of my thought 
originally'). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saf- 
fron, for saffron- eaters contract a terrible Tartar- 
like yellow. Pray to avoid the fiend. Eat nothing 
that gives the heartburn. Shave the upper lip. Go 
about like an European. Read no book of voyages 
(they are nothing but lies) ; only now and then a 
romance, to keep the fancy under. Above all, 
don't go to any sights of wild beasts. That has 
been your ruin. Accustom yourself to write fa- 
miliar letters on common subjects to your friends in 
England, such as are of a moderate understanding. 
And think about common things more. I supped 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. i6i 

last night with Rickman, and met a merry natural 
captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having 
made a pun at Otaheite in the O. language. 'T is 
the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, be- 
cause he was so 7nuch of the gentleman. Rickman 
is a man " absolute in all numbers." I think I 
may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not 
go to Tartary first ; for you '11 never come back. 
Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi ! 
their stomachs are always craving. 'Tis terrible 
to be weighed out at fivepence a pound. To sit at 
table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a 
guest, but as a meat ! 

God bless you ! do come to England. Air and 
exercise may do great things. Talk with some 
minister. Why not your father? 

God dispose all for the best ! I have discharged 
my duty. 

Your sincere friend, 

C. Lamb. 

XLII. 

TO MANNING. 

February, 1803. 
Not a sentence, not a syllable, of Trismegistus 
shall be lost through my neglect. I am his word- 
banker, his storekeeper of puns and syllogisms. 
You cannot conceive (and if Trismegistus cannot, 
no man can) the strange joy which I felt at the 
receipt of a letter from Paris. It seemed to give 
me a learned importance which placed me above 

II 



1 62 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

all who had not Parisian correspondents. Believe 
that I shall carefully husband every scrap, which 
will save you the trouble of memory when you 
come back. You cannot write things so trifling, 
let them only be about Paris, which I shall not 
treasure. In particular, I must have parallels of 
actors and actresses. I must be told if any build- 
ing in Paris is at all comparable to St. Paul's, which, 
contrary to the usual mode of that part of our 
nature called admiration, I have looked up to with 
unfading wonder every morning at ten o'clock, ever 
since it has lain in my way to business. At noon 
I casually glance upon it, being hungry ; and hun- 
ger has not much taste for the fine arts. Is any 
night- walk comparable to a walk from St. Paul's 
to Charing Cross, for lighting and paving, crowds 
going and coming without respite, the rattle of 
coaches, and the cheerfulness of shops? Have you 
seen a man guillotined yet ? is it as good as hang- 
ing? Are the women all painted, and the men all 
monkeys? or are there not a few that look like 
rational of both sexes ? Are you and the First 
Consul thick ? All this expense of ink I may fairly 
put you to, as your letters will not be solely for my 
proper pleasure, but are to serve as memoranda 
and notices, helps for short memory, a kind of 
Rumfordizing recollection, for yourself on your re- 
turn. Your letter was just what a letter should 
be, — crammed and very funny. Every part of it 
pleased me, till you came to Paris, and your philo- 
sophical indolence or indifference stung me. You 
cannot stir from your rooms till you know the 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 163 

language ! What the devil ! are men nothing but 
word-trumpets ? Are men all tongue and ear ? Have 
these creatures, that you and I profess to know 
something about, no faces, gestures, gabble ; no 
folly, no absurdity, no induction of French educa- 
tion upon the abstract idea of men and women ; 
no similitude nor dissimilitude to Enghsh? Why, 
thou cursed Smellfungus ! your account of your 
landing and reception, and Bullen (I forget how 
you spell it,, — it was spelt my way in Harry the 
Eighth's time), was exactly in that minute style 
which strong impressions inspire (writing to a 
Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). It 
appears to me as if I should die with joy at the 
first landing in a foreign country. It is the nearest 
pleasure which a grown man can substitute for that 
unknown one, which he can never know, — the plea- 
sure of the first entrance into life from the womb. 
I daresay, in a short time, my habits would come 
back like a " stronger man " armed, and drive out 
that new pleasure ; and I should soon sicken for 
known objects. Nothing has transpired here that 
seems to me of sufficient importance to send dry- 
shod over the water ; but I suppose you will want 
to be told some news. The best and the worst 
to me is, that I have given up two guineas a week 
at the " Post," and regained my health and spirits, 
which were upon the wane. I grew sick, and 
Stuart unsatisfied. Ludisti satis, tempus abire est ; 
I must cut closer, that 's all. Mister Fell — or as 
you, with your usual facetiousness and drollery, call 
him, Mr. F -f- ^ — has stopped short in the middle 



1 64 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

of his play. Some friend has told him that it has 
not the least merit in it. Oh that I had the recti- 
fying of the Litany ! I would put in a Libera nos 
{Scriptores videlicet) ab amicis ! That 's all the 
news. A propos (is it pedantry, writing to a 
Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by a 
French word, when an English one would not do 
as well ? Methinks my thoughts fall naturally into 

it)- 

In all this time I have done but one thing which I 
reckon tolerable, and that I will transcribe, because 
it may give you pleasure, being a picture of my 
humors. You will find it in my last page. It 
absurdly is a first number of a series, thus strangled 
in its birth. 

More news ! The Professor's Rib ^ has come out 
to be a disagreeable woman, so much so as to drive 
me and some more old cronies from his house. 
He must not wonder if people are shy of coming 
to see him because of the Snakes. 

C. L. 



XLIII. 

TO WILLIAM GODWIN. 

November \o, 1803. 
Dear Godwin, — You never made a more unlucky 
and perverse mistake than to suppose that the rea- 
son of my not writing that cursed thing was to be 
found in your book. I assure you most sincerely 

1 Mrs. Godwin. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 165 

that I have been greatly delighted with " Chaucer." ^ 
I may be wrong, but I think there is one consider- 
able error runs through it, which is a conjecturing 
spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by sup- 
posing what Chaucer did and how he felt, where the 
materials are scanty. So far from meaning to with- 
hold from you (out of mistaken tenderness) this 
opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs. Godwin that I 
did find default, which I should reserve naming until 
I should see you and talk it over. This she may 
very well remember, and also that I declined nam- 
ing this fault until she drew it from me by asking 
me if there was not too much fancy in the work. 
I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to 
go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never 
very fond of saying things before third persons, be- 
cause in the relation (such is human nature) some- 
thing is sure to be dropped. If Mrs. Godwin has 
been the cause of your misconstruction, I am very 
angry, tell her ; yet it is not an anger unto death. I 
remember also telling Mrs. G. (which she may have 
dropi) that I was by turns considerably more de- 
lighted than I expected. But I wished to reserve 
all this until I saw you. I even had conceived an 
expression to meet you with, which was thanking 
you for some of the most exquisite pieces of criti- 
cism I had ever read in my life. In particular, I 
should have brought forward that on " Troilus and 
Cressida" and Shakspeare, which, it is little to say, 

^ Godwin's "Life of Chaucer," — a work, says Canon 
Ainger, consisting of "four fifths ingenious guessing to one 
fifth of material having any historic basis." 



1 66 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

delighted me and instructed me (if not absolutely in- 
structed va^^ yet put vcilQ full- grown sense many con- 
ceptions which had arisen in me before in my most 
discriminating moods) . All these things I was pre- 
paring to say, and bottling them up till I came, 
thinking to please my friend and host the author, 
when lo ! this deadly blight intervened. 

I certainly ought to make great allowances for 
your misunderstanding me. You, by long habits of 
composition and a greater command gained over 
your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory 
and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) 
sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common let- 
ter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon 
myself as an engagement will act upon me to tor- 
ment ; e.g.. when I have undertaken, as three or 
four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for 
Merchant Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have 
fretted over them in perfect inability to do them, and 
have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness 
for a week together. The same, till by habit I have 
acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in 
making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, 
my head is so whimsical a head that I cannot, after 
reading another man's book, let it have been never 
so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical 
way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this 
you must have perceived of me in conversation. 
Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking 
of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any 
comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently 
applaud, or perversely stickle, at pai'ts ; but I can- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 167 

not grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is noth- 
ing to brag of) may be seen in my two Uttle composi- 
tions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, 
however partial, can find any story. I wrote such 
stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, 
quite irreducible into i \ column of a paper, that I 
was perfectly ashamed to show it you. However, it 
is become a serious matter that I should convince 
you I neither slunk from the task through a wilful 
deserting neglect, or through any (most imaginary 
on your part) distaste of '* Chaucer ; " and I will try 
my hand again, — I hope with better luck. My health 
is bad, and my time taken up ; but all I can spare 
between this and Sunday shall be employed for you, 
since you desire it : and if I bring you a crude, 
wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it, and 
forgive me ; if it proves anything better than I pre- 
dict, may it be a peace-oifering of sweet incense 

between us ! 

C. Lamb. 

XLIV. 

TO MANNING. 

February 24, 1805. 
Dear Manning, — I have been very unwell since 
I saw you. A sad depression of spirits, a most un- 
accountable nervousness ; from which I have been 
partially relieved by an odd accident. You knew 
Dick Hopkins, the swearing scullion of Caius? 
This fellow, by industry and agility, has thrust him- 
self into the important situations (no sinecures, be- 



1 68 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 

lieve me) of cook to Trinity Hall and Caius College ; 
and the generous creature has contrived, with the 
greatest delicacy imaginable, to send me a present 
of Cambridge brawn. What makes it the more 
extraordinary is, that the man never saw me in his 
life that I know of. I suppose he has heard of me. 
I did not immediately recognize the donor ; but one 
of Richard's cards, which had accidentally fallen into 
the straw, detected him in a moment. Dick, you 
know, was always remarkable for flourishing. His 
card imports that *' orders [to wit, for brawn] from 
any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, will be 
duly executed," etc. At first I thought of declin- 
ing the present ; but Richard knew my blind side 
when he pitched upon brawn. 'T is of all my hob- 
bies the supreme in the eating way. He might have 
sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumpets, chips, 
hog's lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped 
from a fillet of veal (dexterously replaced by a 
salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, 
runaway gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, 
tender effusions of laxative woodcocks, the red 
spawn of lobsters, leverets' ears, and such pretty 
filchings common to cooks ; but these had been 
ordinary presents, the everyday courtesies of dish- 
washers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a noble 
thought. It is not every common gullet- fancier that 
can properly esteem it. It is like a picture of 
one of the choice old Italian masters. Its gusto is 
of that hidden sort. As Wordsworth sings of a 
modest poet, "you must love him, ere to you he 
will seem worthy of your love," so brawn, you must 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 169 

taste it, ere to you it will seem to have any taste at 
all. But 'tis nuts to the adept, — those that will send 
out their tongues and feelers to find it out. It will 
be wooed, and not unsought be won. Now, ham- 
essence, lobsters, turtle, such popular minions, abso- 
lutely court you, lay themselves out to strike you at 
first smack, like one of David's pictures (they call 
him Darveed), compared with the plain russet- 
coated wealth of a Titian or a Correggio, as I illus- 
trated above. Such are the obvious glaring heathen 
virtues of a corporation dinner, compared with the 
reserved collegiate worth of brawn. Do me the 
favour to leave oif the business which you may be 
at present upon, and go immediately to the kitchens 
of Trinity and Caius, and make my most respectful 
compliments to Mr. Richard Hopkins, and assure 
him that his brawn is most excellent, and that I 
am moreover obliged to him for his innuendo about 
salt water and bran, which I shall not fail to im- 
prove. I leave it to you whether you shall choose 
to pay him the civility of asking him to dinner while 
you stay in Cambridge, or in whatever other way you 
may best like to show your gratitude to my friend. 
Richard Hopkins, considered in many points of 
view, is a very extraordinary character. Adieu. I 
hope to see you to supper in London soon, where 
we will taste Richard's brawn, and drink his health 
in a cheerful but moderate cup. We have not many 
such men in any rank of hfe as Mr. R. Hopkins. 
Crisp the barber, of St. Mary's, was just such an- 
other. I wonder he never sent me any little token, 
— some chestnuts, or a puff, or two pound of hair just 



170 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

to remember him by ; gifts are like nails. Prcesens 

ut absens, that is, your present makes amends for 

your absence. 

Yours, 

C. Lamb. 
XLV. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

June 14, 1805. 

My dear Miss Wordsworth, — I have every rea- 
son to suppose that this illness, like all Mary's 
former ones, will be but temporary. But I cannot 
always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and 
I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am 
like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not 
think, lest I should think wrong ; so used am I to 
look up to her in the least and the biggest perplexity. 
To say all that I know of her, would be more than 
I think anybody could believe or ever understand ; 
and when I hope to have her well again with me, 
it would be sinning against her feelings to go about 
to praise her ; for I can conceal nothing that I do 
from her. She is older and wiser and better than 
I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to my- 
self by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She 
would share Hfe and death, heaven and hell, with me. 
She lives but for me ; and I know I have been 
wasting and teasing her life for five years past in- 
cessantly with my cursed ways of going on. But 
even in this upbraiding of myself I am offending 
against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me 
for better, for worse ; and if the balance has been 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB, 171 

against her hitherto, it was a noble trade. I am 
stupid, and lose myself in what I write. I write 
rather what answers to my feelings (which are some- 
times sharp enough) than express my present ones 
for I am only flat and stupid. I am sure you will 
excuse my writing any more, I am so very poorly. 

I cannot resist transcribing three or four lines 
which poor Mary made upon a picture (a Holy 
Family) which we saw at an auction only one week 
before she left home. They are sweet lines, and 
upon a sweet picture. But I send them only as the 
last memorial of her. 

VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. DA VINCI. 

« Maternal Lady, with thy virgin-grace. 
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth, sure, 
And thou a virgin pure. 
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face 
Men look upon, they wish to be 
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee." 

You had her lines about the "Lady Blanch." 
You have not had some which she wrote upon a copy 
of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that 
print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully 
interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) 
had hung in our room. 'T is light and pretty. 

" Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 
Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace ? 
Come, fair and pretty, tell to me 
Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be ? 
Thou pretty art and fair. 

But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. 
No need for Blanch her history to tell, 
Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well ; 



172 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

But when I look on thee, I only know 

There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago." 

This is a little unfair, to tell so much about our- 
selves, and to advert so little to your letter, so full 
of comfortable tidings of you all. But my own cares 
press pretty close upon me, and you can make allow- 
ance. That you may go on gathering strength and 
peace is my next wish to Mary's recovery. 

I had almost forgot your "repeated invitation. 
Supposing that Mary will be well and able, there is 
another ability which you may guess at, which I 
cannot promise myself. In prudence we ought not 
to come. This illness will make it still more pru- 
dential to wait. It is not a balance of this way of 
spending our money against another way, but an 
absolute question of whether we shall stop now, or 
go on wasting away the little we have got before- 
hand, which my evil conduct has already encroached 
upon one-half. My best love, however, to you all, 
and to that most friendly creature, Mrs. Clarkson, 
and better health to her, when you see or write 

to her. 

Charles Lamb. 

XLVI.i 

TO MANNING. 

May 10, 1806. 

My dear Manning, — I did n't know what your 
going was till I shook a last fist with you, and then 

1 Addressed : " Mr. Manning, Passenger on Board the 
'Thames,' East Indiaman, Portsmouth." Manning had set 
out for Canton. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. '73 

'twas just like having shaken hands with a wretch 
on the fatal scaffold, and when you are down .he 
ladder you can never stretch out to him again. 
Mary says you are dead, and there's nothing to do 
but To leave it to time to do for us in the end what 
it always does for those who mourn for people m 
such a case. But she '11 see by your letter you are 
not quite dead. A little kicking and agony, and 
then — Martin Burney took me out a walkmg that 
evening, and we talked of Manning ; and then i 
came home and smoked for you, and at twelve 
o'clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from 
the play, and there was more talk and more smoking, 
and they all seemed first-rate characters, because 
they knew a certain person. But what 's the use of 
talking about 'em? By the time you '11 have made 
vour escape from the Kalmuks, you '11 have stayed 
so long I shall never be able to bring to your mind 
who Mary was, who will have died about a year be- 
fore, nor who the Holcrofts were ! Me perhaps you 
will mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr. 
Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary (whom 
you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy that 
she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it 
had so happened. But you must bring her a token, 
a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly 
little mandarin for our mantelpiece, as a compan- 
ion to the child I am going to purchase at the mu- 
seum. She says you saw her writings about the 
other day, and she wishes you should know what 
they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller 
twenty of Shakspeare's plays, to be made into chil- 



174 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

dren's tales. Six are already done by her ; to wit : 
''The Tempest," "Winter's Tale," "Midsummer 
Night's Dream," "Much Ado," "Two Gentlemen 
of Verona," and " Cymbeline ; " and "The Mer- 
chant of Venice " is in forwardness. I have done 
"Othello" and "Macbeth," and mean to do all 
the tragedies. I think it will be popular among 
the little people, besides money. It 's to bring in 
sixty guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I 
think you 'd think.^ These are the humble amuse- 
ments we propose, while you are gone to plant the 
cross of Christ among barbarous pagan anthro- 
pophagi. Quam ho7no homini p7'cestat / but then, 
perhaps, you '11 get murdered, and we shall die in 
our beds, with a fair literary reputation. Be sure, if 
you see any of .those people whose heads do grow 
beneath their shoulders, that you make a draught of 
them. It will be very curious. Oh, Manning, I 
am serious to sinking almost, when I think that all 
those evenings, which you have made so pleasant, 
are gone perhaps forever. Four years you talk of, 
maybe ten ; and you may come back and find such 
alterations ! Some circumstances may grow up to 
you or to me that may be a bar to the return of any 

1 Miss Lamb has amusingly described the progress of 
their labors on this volume; "You would like to see us, as 
we often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion 
sitting), like Hermia and Helena, in the 'Midsummer 
Night's Dream ; ' or rather like an old literary Darby and 
Joan, I taking snuff, and he groaning all the while, and say- 
ing he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he 
has finished, and then he finds out that he has made some- 
thing of it." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 175 

such intimacy. I daresay all this is hum, and that 
all will come back ; but indeed we die many deaths 
before we die, and I am almost sick when I think 
that such a hold as I had of you is gone. I have 
friends, but some of 'em are changed. Marriage, 
or some circumstance, rises up to make them not 
the same. But I felt sure of you. And that last 
token you gave me of expressing a wish to have my 
name joined with yours, you know not how it 
affected me, — like a legacy. 

God bless you in every way you can form a wish ! 
May He give you health, and safety, and the accom- 
plishment of all your objects, and return you again to 
us to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we 
shall be moved from the Temple) . I will nurse the 
remembrance of your steadiness and quiet, which 
used to infuse something like itself into our nervous 
minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell ! 
and take her best wishes and mine. 

Good by. 

C.L. 

XLVII. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

Jujte, 1806. 
Dear Wordsworth, — We are pleased, you may 
be sure, with the good news of Mrs. Wordsworth.^ 
Hope all is well over by this time. " A fine boy ! 
Have you any more ? — One more and a girl, — 
poor copies of me ! " vide " Mr. H.," a farce which 

1 Wordsworth's son Thomas was born June 16, 1806. 



176 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the proprietors have done me the honor — But I 
set down Mr. Wroughton's own words. N. B. — The 
ensuing letter was sent in answer to one which I 
wrote, begging to know if my piece had any chance, 
as I might make alterations, etc. I writing on 
Monday, there comes this letter on the Wednesday. 
Attend ! 

\Copy of a letter from Mr. R. Wroughton."] 

Sir, — Your piece of " Mr. H.," I am desired to say, 
is accepted at Drury Lane Theatre by the proprietors, 
and if agreeable to you, will be brought forwards when 
the proper opportunity serves. The piece shall be sent 
to you for your alterations in the course of a few days, 
as the same is not in my hands, but with the proprietors. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

Richard Wroughton. 
[Dated] 
66, Gowef Street, 

Wednesday, June nth, 1806. 

On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin comes. The 
scent of a manager's letter brought him. He would 
have gone farther any day on such a business. I 
read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and 
peremptory. Our conversation naturally fell upon 
pieces, different sorts of pieces, — what is the best 
way of offering a piece ; how far the caprice of 
managers is an obstacle in the way of a piece ; how 
to judge of the merits of a piece ; how long a piece 
may remain in the hands of the managers before it 
is acted ; and my piece, and your piece, and my 
poor brother's piece, — my poor brother was all his 
life endeavoring to get a piece accepted. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. i^^ 

I wrote that in mere wantonness of triumph. 
Have nothing more to say about it. The managers, 
I thank my stars, have decided its merits forever. 
They are the best judges of pieces, and it would be 
insensible in me to affect a false modesty, after the 
very flattering letter which I have received. 



ADMIT 

TO 

BOXES. 

Mr. H. 

Ninth Night. 

Charles Lamb. 



I think this will be as good a pattern for orders as 
I can think on. A little thin flowery border, round, 
neat, not gaudy, and the Drury Lane Apollo, with 
the harp at the top. Or shall I have no Apollo, 
— simply nothing? Or perhaps the Comic Muse? 

The same form, only I think without the Apollo, 
will serve for the pit and galleries. I think it will 
be best to write my name at full length ; but then 
if I give away a great many, that will be tedious. 
Perhaps Ch. Lamb will do. 

BOXES, now I think on it, I '11 have in capitals ; 
the rest, in a neat Italian hand. Or better, perhaps, 
•^OjCCfii in Old English characters, like Madoc or 
Thalaba? 

A propos of Spenser (you will find him mentioned 
a page or two before, near enough for an a propos) , 
I was discoursing on poetry (as one 's apt to deceive 
one's self, and when a person is willing to talk of 

12 



178 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

what one likes, to believe that he also likes the same, 
as lovers do) with a young gentleman of my office, 
who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord Strang- 
ford, and the principal modern poets, and I hap- 
pened to mention Epithalamiums, and that I could 
show him a very fine one of Spenser's. At the 
mention of this my gentleman, who is a very fine 
gentleman, pricked up his ears and expressed great 
pleasure, and begged that I would give him leave to 
copy it ; he did not care how long it was (for I 
objected the length), he should be very happy to 
see anything by him. Then pausing, and looking 
sad, he ejaculated, " Poor Spencer ! " I begged to 
know the reason of his ejaculation, thinking that 
time had by this time softened down any calamities 
which the bard might have endured. " Why, poor 
fellow," said he, " he has lost his wife ! " ^' Lost 
his wife ! " said I, " who are you talking of? " " Why, 
Spencer!" said he; "I've read the Monody he 
wrote on the occasion, and a very pj-etty thing it 
is.^'' This led to an explanation (it could be delayed 
no longer) that the sound Spensef-, which, when 
poetry is talked of, generally excites an image of an 
old bard in a ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions 
of Sir P. Sidney and perhaps Lord Burleigh, had 
raised in my gentleman a quite contrary image of 
the Honorable William Spencer, who has translated 
some things from the German very prettily, which 
are published with Lady Di Beauclerk's designs. 
Nothing like defining of terms when we talk. What 
blunders might I have fallen into of quite inappli- 
cable criticism, but for this timely explanation ! 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 179 

N.B. — At the beginning of Ed?n. Spenser (to pre- 
vent mistakes) , I have copied from my own copy, 
and primarily from a book of Chalmers's on Shak- 
speare, a sonnet of Spenser's never printed among 
his poems. It is curious, as being manly, and rather 
Miltonic, and as a sonnet of Spenser's with nothing 
in it about love or knighthood. I have no room for 
remembrances, but I hope our doing your commis- 
sion will prove we do not quite forget you. 

C. L. 



XLVIII. 

TO MANNING 

December 5, 1806. 
Manning, your letter, dated Hottentots, August 
the what-was-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope 
that mine will have the same luck. China, Can- 
ton, — bless us, how it strains the imagination and 
makes it ache ! I write under another uncertainty 
whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have 
just learned is going off direct to your part of the 
world, or whether the despatches may not be sealed 
up and this have to wait ; for if it is detained here, 
it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five 
months' voyage coming to you. It will be a point 
of conscience to send you none but bran-new news 
(the latest edition), which will but grow the better, 
like oranges, for a sea-voyage. Oh that you should 
be so many hemispheres off ! — if I speak incorrectly, 
you can correct me. Why, the simplest death or 
marriage that takes place here must be important 



l8o LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB: 

to you as news in the old Bastile. There 's your 
friend Tuthill has got away from France — you re- 
member France ? and Tuthill ? — ten to one but 
he writes by this post, if he don't get my note in 
time, apprising him of the vessel sailing. Know, 
then, that he has found means to obtain leave from 
Bonaparte, without making use of any incredible ro- 
mantic pretences, as some have done, who never 
meant to fulfil them, to come home ; and I have 
seen him here and at Holcroft's. An't you glad 
about Tuthill? Now then be sorry for Holcroft, 
whose new play, called " The Vindictive Man," 
was damned about a fortnight since. It died in 
part of its own weakness, and in part for being 
choked up with bad actors. The two principal 
parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Ban- 
nister ; but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the 
managers, — they have had some squabble, — and 
Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going 
off of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. 
De Camp took his. His part, the principal comic 
hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, 
taken out of the "Road to Ruin," — not only the 
same character, but the identical Goldfinch ; the 
same as Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare. As 
the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the audience 
did not know that H. had written it, but were dis- 
pleased at his stealing from the '' Road to Ruin ; " 
and those who might have borne a gentlemanly 
coxcomb with his "That 's your sort," "Go it," — 
such as Lewis is, — did not relish the intolerable 
vulgarity and inanity of the idea stripped of his 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. l8i 

manner. De Camp was hooted, more than hissed, — 
hooted and bellowed off the stage before the second 
act was finished ; so that the remainder of his part 
was forced to be, with some violence to the play, 
omitted. In addition to this, a strumpet was an- 
other principal character, — a most mifortunate 
choice in this moral day. The audience were as 
scandalized as if you were to introduce such a per- 
sonage to their private tea-tables. Besides, her 
action in the play was gross, — wheedling an old 
man into marriage. But the mortal blunder of the 
play was that which, oddly enough, H. took pride 
in, and exultingly told me of the night before it 
came out, that there were no less than eleven princi- 
pal characters in it, and I believe he meant of the 
men only, for the play-bill expressed as much, not 

reckoning one woman and one ; and true it 

was, for Mr. Powell, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Bartlett, 
Mr. H. Siddons, Mr. Barrymore, etc., to the num- 
ber of eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and 
there was as much of them in quantity and rank 
as of the hero and heroine, and most of them 
gentlemen who seldom appear but as the hero's 
friend in a farce, — for a minute or two, — and here 
they all had their ten-minute speeches, and one of 
them gave the audience a serious account how he 
was now a lawyer, but had been a poet ; and then a 
long enumeration of the inconveniences of author- 
ship, rascally booksellers, reviewers, etc. j which 
first set the audience a-gaping. But I have said 
enough; you will be so sorry that you will not 
think the best of me for my detail : but news is 



1 82 LETTERS OE CHARLES LAMB, 

news at Canton. Poor H. I fear will feel the dis- 
appointment very seriously in a pecuniary light. 
From what I can learn, he has saved nothing. You 
and I were hoping one day that he had ; but I fear 
he has nothing but his pictures and books, and a 
no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to 
part with his long-necked Guido that hangs oppo- 
site as you enter, and the game-piece that hangs 
in the back drawing-room, and all those Vandykes, 
etc. ! God should temper the wind to the shorn 
connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you that I 
feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his 
household. I assure you his fate has soured a good 
deal the pleasure I should have otherwise taken in 
my own little farce being accepted, and I hope 
about to be acted, — it is in rehearsal actually, and 
I expect it to come out next week. It is kept a 
sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone on pri- 
vately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story 
should come out, which would infallibly damn it. 
You remember I had sent it before you went. 
Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with it. 
I speedily got an answer. I took it to make altera- 
tions, and lazily kept it some months, then took 
courage and furbished it up in a day or two and 
took it. In less than a fortnight I heard the princi- 
pal part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and 
only wanted a prologue, which I have since done 
and sent ; and I had a note the day before yester- 
day from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat face, 
he is not a bad actor in some things), to say 
that I should be summoned to the rehearsal after 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 183 

the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had 
no idea it was so forward. I have had no trouble, 
attended no reading or rehearsal, made no interest ; 
what a contrast to the usual parade of authors ! 
But it is peculiar to modesty to do all things with- 
out noise or pomp ! I have some suspicion it will 
appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says 
in his note, it is so forward that if wanted it may 
come out next week, and a new melodrama is an- 
nounced for every day till then ; and " a new farce 
is in rehearsal," is put up in the bills. Now, you'd 
like to know the subject. The title is " Mr. H.," 
no more ; how simple, how taking ! A great H. 
sprawling over the play-bill and attracting eyes at 
every corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing at 
Bath, vastly rich, all the ladies dying for him, all 
bursting to know who he is ; but he goes by no 
other name than Mr. H., — a curiosity like that of 
the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great 
nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, 
I will, but I can't give you an idea how I have done 
it. I '11 just tell you that after much vehement ad- 
miration, when his true name comes out, *' Hogs- 
flesh," all the women shun him, avoid him, and not 
one can be found to change their name for him, — 
that 's the idea, — how flat it is here ; ^ but how 
whimsical in the farce ! And only think how hard 
upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, 
and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wed- 
nesday after ; but all China will ring of it by and 

^ It was precisely this flatness, this sHghtness of plot and 
catastrophe, that doomed '* Mr. H." to failure. See next 
letter. 



1 84 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

by. N. B. (But this is a secret.) The Professor ^ 
has got a tragedy coming out, with the young Ros- 
cius in it, in January next, as we say, — January last 
it will be with you ; and though it is a profound 
secret now, as all his affairs are, it cannot be much 
of one by the time you read this. However, don't 
let it go any farther. I understand there are dra- 
matic exhibitions in China. One would not like to 
be forestalled. Do you find in all this stuff 1 have 
written anything like those feelings which one should 
send my old adventuring friend, that is gone to wan- 
der among Tartars, and may never come again ? I 
don't ; but your going away, and all about you, is a 
threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking, 
it has come to me when I have been dull with 
anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have 
come from it than to have introduced it. I want 
you, you don't know how much ; but if I had you 
here in my European garret, we should but talk over 
such stuff as I have written, so — Those " Tales from 
Shakspeare " are near coming out, and Mary has 
begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author; 
he has been in such a way lately, — Dawe the painter, 
I mean, — he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and 
says nothing, then sighs, and leans his head on his 
hand. I took him to be in love, but it seems he 
was only meditating a work, — " The Life of Mor- 
land : " the young man is not used to composition. 
Rickman and Captain Burney are well ; they assem- 
ble at my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday, — 

1 Godwin. His tragedy of " Faulkner " was published 
in iSo8. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 185 

a new institution. Like other great men, I have a 
public day, — cribbage and pipes, with PhiUips and 
noisy Martin Burney. 

Good Heaven, what a bit only I 've got left ! 
How shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel ! 
Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn 
lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. I shall 
get ^200 from the theatre if " Mr. H." has a good 
run, and I hope ;z^ioo for the copyright. Nothing 
if it fails ; and there never was a more ticklish thing. 
The whole depends on the manner in which the 
name is brought out, which I value myself on, as a 
chef d^ceuvre. How the paper grows less and less ! 
In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to 
you, and you may rave to the Great Wall of China. 
N. B. — Is there such a wall? Is it as big as' Old 
London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a 
friend of mine named Ball at Canton ? If you are 
acquainted, remember me kindly to him. Maybe 
you '11 think I have not said enough of Tuthill and 
the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a noble fellow, as far as I 
can judge. The Holcrofts bear their disappoint- 
ment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mor- 
tified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it 
were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. 
N. B. — If my little thing don't succeed, I shall easily 
survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s venture, 
but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to 
sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedle- 
dees. She remembers you. You are more to us 
than five hundred farces, clappings, etc. 

Come back one day. C. Lamb. 



1 86 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



XLIX. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

December , ii, 1806. 
Mary's love to all of you; I wouldn't let her 
write. 

Dear Wordsworth, — " Mr. H." came out last 
night, and failed. I had many fears ; the subject 
was not substantial enough. John Bull must have 
solider fare than a letter. We are pretty stout about 
it ; have had plenty of condoling friends ; but, after 
all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You 
will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. 
It was received with such shouts as I never witnessed 
to a prologue. It was attempted to be encored. 
How hard ! a thing I did merely as a task, be- 
cause it was wanted, and set no great store by ; and 
" Mr. H." ! The quantity of friends we had in the 
house — my brother and I being in public offices, 
etc. — was astonishing ; but they yielded at last 
to a few hisses. 

A hundred hisses (Damn the word, I write it 
like kisses, — how different!) — a hundred hisses 
outweigh a thousand claps.^ The former come more 
directly from the heart. Well, 't is withdrawn, and 
there is an end. 

Better luck to us, 

C. Lamb. 

1 Lamb was himself in the audience, and is said to have 
taken a conspicuous share in the storm of hisses that fol- 
lowed the dropping of the curtain. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 187 



L. 

TO MANNING. 

January 2, 1 810. 

Dear Manning, — When I last wrote to you, I 
was in lodgings. I am now in chambers. No. 4, 
Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see 
you any evening. Bring any of your friends the 
Mandarins with you. I have two sitting-rooms. I 
call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or 
loll, or lean, or try any posture in them ; but they are 
best for sitting, — not squatting down Japanese fash- 
ion, but in the more decorous way which European 
usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms 
on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, etc., 
rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a 
choice collection of the works of Hogarth, an Eng- 
lish painter of some humor. In my next best are 
shelves containing a small, but well-chosen library. 
My best room commands a court, in which there 
are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent, 

cold with brandy, and not very insipid without. 

Here I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till Mr. 
Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may 
have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodgings 
for single gentlemen. I sent you a parcel of books 
by my last, to give you some idea of the state of 
European literature. There comes with this two 
volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, a 
sequel to '' Mrs. Leicester; " the best you may sup- 



1 88 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pose mine ; the next best are my coadjutor's. You 
may amuse yourself in guessing them out ; but I 
must tell you mine are but one third in quantity of 
the whole. So much for a very delicate subject. 
It is hard to speak of one's self, etc. Holcroft had 
finished his life when I wrote to you, and Hazhtt has 
since finished his life, — I do not mean his own life, 
but he has finished a life of Holcroft, which is going 
to press. Tuthill is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. 
Lamb. I have published a little book for children 
on titles of honor ; and to give them some idea of 
the difference of rank and gradual rising, I have 
made a little scale, supposing myself to receive the 
following various accessions of dignity from the king, 
who is the fountain of honor, — as at first, i, Mr. 
C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb, Esq.; 3, SirC. Lamb, Bart.; 
4, Baron Lamb, of Stamford; 5, Viscount Lamb; 
6, Earl Lamb ; 7, Marquis Lamb ; 8, Duke Lamb. 
It would look like quibbling to carry it on farther, 
and especially as it is not necessary for children to 
go beyond the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in 
our own country, otherwise I have sometimes in my 
dreams imagined myself still advancing, as 9th, King 
Lamb; loth. Emperor Lamb; nth. Pope Innocent, 
— higher than which is nothing. Puns I have not 
made many (nor punch much) since the date of 
my last ; one I cannot help relating. A constable 
in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight 
people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral ; 
upon which I remarked that they must be very 
sharp-set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning 
part of my mind more than the imaginative. I 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 189 

am stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, 
and another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in 
Europe and turkey in Asia), that I can't jog on. It 
is New Year here. That is, it was New Year half a 
year back, when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles 
me more than time and space, and yet nothing 
puzzles me less, for I never think about them. The 
Persian ambassador is the principal thing talked of 
now. I sent some people to see him worship the 
sun on Primrose Hill at half-past six in the morning, 
28th November; but he did not come, — which 
makes me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect 
almost extinct in Persia. The Persian ambassador's 
name is Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people call 
him Shaw Nonsense. While I think of it, I have 
put three letters besides my own three into the 
India post for you, from your brother, sister, and 
some gentleman whose name I forget. Will they, 
have they, did they come safe? The distance you 
are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you said 
you did not know Kate *********. I express her 
by nine stars, though she is but one. You must 
have seen her at her father's. Try and remember 
her. Coleridge is bringing out a paper in weekly 
numbers, called the " Friend," which I would send, 
if I could ; but the difficulty I had in getting the 
packets of books out to you before deters me ; and 
you '11 want something new to read when you come 
home. Except Kate, I have had no vision of excel- 
lence this year, and she passed by like the queen 
on her coronation day; you don't know whether 
you saw her or not. Kate is fifteen; I go about 



190 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

moping, and sing the old, pathetic ballad I used to 
like in my youth, — 

" She 's sweet fifteen, 
I 'm ojie year more.'" 

Mrs. Bland sang it in boy's clothes the first time 
I heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in 
my voice are like Mrs. Bland's. That glorious singer, 
Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a 
season. He was a rare composition of the Jew, the 
gentleman, and the angel, yet all these elements 
mixed up so kindly in him that you could not tell 
which predominated; but he is gone, and one Phil- 
lips is engaged instead. Kate is vanished, but Miss 
Burrell is always to be met with ! 

" Queens drop away, while blue-legged Maukin thrives, 
And courtly Mildred dies, while country Madge survives." 

That is not my poetry, but Quarles's ; but have n't 
you observed that the rarest things are the least 
obvious? Don't show anybody the names in this 
letter. I write confidentially, and wish this letter 
to be considered as private. Hazlitt has written a 
grammar for Godwin; Godwin sells it bound up 
with a treatise of his own on language : but the 
^7'av 7nare is the better horse. I don't allude to Mrs. 
Godwin, but to the word grammar, which comes 
near to gray mare, if you observe, in sound. That 
figure is called paranomasia in Greek. I am some- 
times happy in it. An old woman begged of me for 
charity. " Ah, sir," said she, " I have seen better 
days ! " " So have I, good woman," I replied ; but 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 191 

I meant literally, days not so rainy and overcast as 
that on which begged, — she meant more prosper- 
ous days. 



LI. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

August, 1 8 10. 
Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with 
nonsense, as the geographers used to cram monsters 
in the voids of the maps, and call it Terra Incognita. 
She has told you how she has taken to water like a 
hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imita- 
tion,^ but it goes against me a little at first. I have 
been acquaintance with it now for full four days, 
and it seems a moon. I am full of cramps and rheu- 
matisms, and cold internally, so that fire won't warm 
me ; yet I bear all for virtue's sake. Must I then 
leave you, gin, rum, brandy, aqua-vitce, pleasant, jolly 
fellows? Damn temperance and he that first in- 
vented it! — some Anti-Noahite. Coleridge has 
powdered his head, and looks like Bacchus, — 
Bacchus ever sleek and young. He is going to turn 
sober, but his clock has not struck yet ; meantime 
he pours down goblet after goblet, the second to see 
where the first is gone, the third to see no harm 
happens to the second, a fourth to say there is an- 
other coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is 
the last. C. L. 

1 An experiment in total abstinence ; it did not last long. 



192 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

LII. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

October 19, 18 10. 

Dear W., — Mary has been very ill, which you 
have heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She 
is very weak and low-spirited now. I was much 
pleased with your continuation of the " Essay on 
Epitaphs."^ It is the only sensible thing which has 
been written on that subject, and it goes to the 
bottom. In particular I was pleased with your 
translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain 
feeling under it. It is perfectly a test. But what 
is the reason we have no good epitaphs after all? 

A very striking instance of your position might be 
found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if 
you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has 
been blessed by the residence of a poet who, for love 
or money, I do not well know which, has dignified 
every gravestone for the last few years with bran- 
new verses, all different and all ingenious, with the 
author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet 
Swan of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains 
and his rhymes that the same thought never occurs 
twice, — more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever 
occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that 
the same thought should recur. It is long since I 
saw and read these inscriptions ; but I remember the 

I Published in Coleridge's " Friend," Feb. 22, 1810. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 1 93 

impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the 
intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, 
as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and 
uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word 
"death" he had often seen separate and conjunct 
with other words, till he had learned to speak of all 
its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will dis- 
cuss you the attributes of the word " God " in a 
pulpit, and will talk of infinity with a tongue that 
dangles from a skull that never reached in thought 
and thorough imagination two inches, or farther than 
from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to 
the sounding-board of the pulpit. 

But the epitaphs were trim and sprag, and patent, 
and pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above 
the old mumpsimus of "Afflictions sore." ... To 
do justice, though, it must be owned that even the 
excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new, 
must have suffered something in passing through so 
many thousand applications, many of them no doubt 
quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington church- 
yard (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died 
^^ /Etatis four months," with this seasonable inscrip- 
tion appended, " Honor thy father and thy mother, 
that thy days may be long in the land," etc. Sin- 
cerely wishing your children long hfe to honor, etc., 
I remain, 

C. Lamb. 



13 



194 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

LIII. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

August 14, 18 14. 

Dear Wordsworth, — I cannot tell you how 
pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of 
poetry which you have sent me ; and to get it 
before the rest of the world, too ! I have gone 
quite through with it, and was thinking to have ac- 
complished that pleasure a second time before I 
wrote to thank you ; but Martin Burney came in the 
night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it : 
but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the 
noblest conversational poem ^ I ever read, — a day in 
heaven. The part (or rather main body) which 
has left the sweetest odor on my memory (a bad 
term for the remains of an impression so recent) is 
the "Tales of the Churchyard," — the only girl 
among seven brethren, born out of due time, and 
not duly taken away again ; the deaf man and the 
blind man ; the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom 
antipathies reconcile ; the Scarron- entry of the 
rusticating parson upon his solitude, — these were 
all new to me too. My having known the story of 
Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaint- 
ance, even as long back as when I saw you first at 
Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. 
I don't know what to pick out of this best of books 
upon the best subjects for partial naming. That 

1 The Excursion. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 195 

gorgeous sunset is famous; I think it must have 
been the identical one we saw on SaUsbury Plain 
five years ago, that drew PhiUips from the card- 
table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to 
its unequalled setting. But neither he nor I had 
gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things 
glorified, such as the prophets saw them in that sun- 
set,— the wheel, the potter's clay, the washpot, the 
wine-press, the almond-tree rod, the baskets of figs, 
the four-fold-visaged head, the throne, and Him 
that sat thereon. 

One feeling I was particularly struck with, as 
what I recognized so very lately at Harrow Church 
on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, 
— the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost 
transforming, properties of a country church just 
entered ; a certain fragrance which it has, either 
from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or 
the air that is let in being pure country, — exactly 
what you have reduced into words ; but I am feel- 
ing that which I cannot express. The reading 
your lines about it fixed me for a time a monument 
in Harrow Church, — do you know it ? — with its fine 
long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by 
vantage of its high site, as far as SaUsbury spire 
itself almost. 

I shall select a day or two very shortly, when I am 
coolest in brain, to have a steady second reading, 
which I feel will lead to many more ; for it will be 
a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall 
be lent me. There is a great deal of noble matter 
about mountain scenery, yet not so much as to over- 



196 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

« 

power and discountenance a poor Londoner, or 
south- countryman entirely, — though Mary seems 
to have felt it occasionally a little too powerfully ; for 
it was her remark, during reading it, that by your 
system it was doubtful whether a liver in towns had 
a soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that 
invisible part of us in her. 

Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and a day or 
two on the banks of the Thames this summer, rural 
images were fast fading from my mind, and by the 
wise provision of the Regent all that was countri- 
fied in the parks is all but obliterated. The very 
colour of green is vanished ; the whole surface of 
Hyde Park is dry, crumbling sand {^Arabia Are- 
nosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever having 
grown there ; booths and drinking-places go all 
round it, for a mile and a half, I am confident, — 
I might say two miles in circuit ; the stench of 
liquors, bad tobacco, dirty people and provisions, 
conquers the air, and we are all stifled and suffo- 
cated in Hyde Park.^ Order after order has been 
issued by Lord Sidmouth in the name of the Regent 
(acting in behalf of his royal father) for the dis- 
persion of the varlets ; but in vain. The vis unita 
of all the publicans in London, Westminster, Mary- 
lebone, and miles round, is too powerful a force 
to put down. The Regent has raised a phantom 
which he cannot lay. There they '11 stay probably 

1 Early in i8i4the London parks were thrown open to the 
public, with fireworks, booths, illuminations, etc., in celebra- 
tion of the peace between France and England. It was two 
or three years before they recovered their usual verdure. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 197 

• 

forever. The whole beauty of the place is gone, — 
that lake-look of the Serpentine (it has got foolish 
ships upon it) ; but something whispers to have 
confidence in Nature and its revival, — 

" At the coming of the milder day. 
These monuments shall all be overgrown." 

Meantime I confess to have smoked one delicious 
pipe in one of the cleanliest and goodliest of the 
booths, — a tent rather, — 

" Oh, call it not a booth ! " 

erected by the public spirit of Watson, who keeps 
the "Adam and Eve" at Pancras (the ale-houses 
have all emigrated, with their train of botdes, mugs, 
cork-screws, waiters, into Hyde Park, — whole ale- 
houses, with all their ale !) in company with some of 
the Guards that had been in France, and a fine 
French girl, habited like a princess of banditti, 
which one of the dogs had transported from the 
Garonne to the Serpentine. The unusual scene in 
Hyde Park, by candle-light, in open air, — good 
tobacca, bottled stout, — made it look like an inter- 
val in a campaign, a repose after battle. I almost 
fancied scars smarting, and was ready to club a story 
with my comrades of some of my lying deeds. 
After all, the fireworks were splendid ; the rockets 
in clusters, in trees, and all shapes, spreading about 
like young stars in the making, floundering about in 
space (like unbroke horses), till some of Newton's 
calculations should fix them; but then they went 
out. Any one who could see 'em, and the still finer 



198 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

showers of gloomy rain-fire that fell sulkily and 
angrily from 'em, and could go to bed without 
dreaming of the last day, must be as hardened an 
atheist as — . 

The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I 
have chosen this part to desire our kindest loves to 
Mrs. Wordsworth and to Dorothea. Will none of 
you ever be in London again? 

Again let me thank you for your present, and 
assure you that fireworks and triumphs have not dis- 
tracted me from receiving a calm and noble enjoy- 
ment from it (which I trust I shall often), and I 
sincerely congratulate you on its appearance. 

With kindest remembrances to you and household, 
we remain, yours sincerely, 

C. Lamb and Sister. 



LIV. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

(1815.) 

Dear Wordsworth, — You have made me very 
proud with your successive book presents.-^ I have 

1 In 18 1 5 Wordsworth published a new edition of his 
poems, with the following title : " Poems by William Words- 
worth ; including Lyrical Ballads, and the Miscellaneous 
Pieces of the Author. With Additional Poems, a new 
Preface, and a Supplementary Essay. In two Volumes." 
The new poems were " Yarrow Visited," " The Force of 
Prayer," " The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale," " Laodamia," 
" Yew-Trees," " A Night Piece," etc., and it was chiefly on 
these that Lamb made his comments. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 199 

been carefully through the two volumes to see that 
nothing was omitted which used to be there. I think 
I miss nothing but a character in the antithetic man- 
ner, which I do not know why you left out, — the 
moral to the boys building the giant, the omission 
whereof leaves it, in my mind, less complete, — and 
one admirable line gone (or something come instead 
of it), "the stone-chat, and the glancing sand- 
piper," which was a line quite alive. I demand 
these at your hand. I am glad that you have not 
sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not 
have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered 
upon the stripped shoulders of little Alice Fell, to 
have atoned all their malice ; I would not have 
given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. I am 
afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a flat falsifi- 
cation of the history) for the household implement, 
as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out 
to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. The 
tub was a good honest tub in its place, and nothing 
could fairly be said against it. You say you made 
the alteration for the "friendly reader;" but the 
"malicious" will take it to himself. Damn 'em ! 
if you give 'em an inch, etc. The Preface is noble, 
and such as you should write. I wish I could set 
my name to it. Imprimatur ; but you have set it 
there yourself, and I thank you. I had rather be 
a doorkeeper in your margin than have their proud- 
est text swelling with my eulogies. The poems in 
the volumes which are new to me are so much in 
the old tone that I hardly received them as novel- 
ties. Of those of which I had no previous knowl- 



200 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

edge, the " Four Yew-Trees " and the mj^sterious 
company which you have assembled there most 
struck me, — " Death the Skeleton, and Time the 
Shadow." It is a sight not for every youthful poet 
to dream of; it is one of the last results he must 
have gone thinking on for years for. " Laodamia " 
is a very original poem, — I mean original with 
reference to your own manner. You have noth- 
ing like it. I should have seen it in a strange 
place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its 
derivation. 

Let me in this place, for I have writ you several 
letters naming it, mention that my brother, who is 
a picture-collector, has picked up an undoubtable 
picture of Milton.^ He gave a few shillings for it, 
and could get no history with it, but that some old 
lady had had it for a great many years. Its age is 
ascertainable from the state of the canvas, and you 
need only see it to be sure that it is the original 
of the heads in the Tonson editions, with which we 
are all so well familiar. Since I saw you, I have 
had a treat in the reading way which comes not 
every day, — the Latin poems of V. Bourne, which 
were quite new to me. What a heart that man 
had, all laid out upon town scenes ! — a proper 
counterpoise to some people's rural extravaganzas. 
Why I mention him is, that your " Power of Music " 
reminded me of his poem of " The Ballad-singer 
in the Seven Dials." Do you remember his epi- 

1 John Lamb afterwards gave the picture to Charles, who 
made it a wedding present to Mrs. Moxon (Emma Isola), 
It is now in the National Portrait Gallery. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 20i 

gram on the old woman who taught Newton the 
ABC, which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to 
call Newton's " Principia " ? I was lately fatiguing 
myself with going through a volume of fine words 
by Lord Thurlow, — excellent words ; and if the 
heart could live by words alone, it could desire no 
better regales. But what an aching vacuum of mat- 
ter ! I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is 
only a consequence of shutting his eyes and think- 
ing he is in the age of the old Elizabeth poets. 
From thence I turned to Bourne. What a sweet, 
unpretending, pretty-mannered, matter fill creature, 
sucking from every flower, making a flower of every- 
thing, his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all 
English ! Bless him ! Latin was n't good enough 
for him. Why wasn't he content with the lan- 
guage which Gay and Prior wrote in? 

I am almost sorry that you printed extracts from 
those first poems, or that you did not print them 
at length. They do not read to me as they do 
altogether. Besides, they have diminished the 
value of the original (which I possess) as a curi- 
osity. I have hitherto kept them distinct in my 
mind, as referring to a particular period of your life. 
All the rest of your poems are so much of a piece 
they might have been written in the same week ; 
these decidedly speak of an earlier period. They 
tell more of what you had been reading. We were 
glad to see the poems "by a female friend."^ The 
one on the Wind is masterly, but not new to us. 
Being only three, perhaps you might have clapped 

1 Dorothy Wordsworth. 



202 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

a D. at the corner, and let it have past as a printer's 
mark to the uninitiated, as a delightful hint to the 
better instructed. As it is, expect a formal criti- 
cism on the poems of your female friend, and she 
must expect it. I should have written before ; but 
I am cruelly engaged, and like to be. On Friday 
I was at office from ten in the morning (two hours 
dinner excepted) to eleven at night, last night till 
nine ; my business and office business in general 
have increased so ; I don't mean I am there every 
night, but I must expect a great deal of it. I never 
leave till four, and do not keep a holiday now once 
in ten times, where I used to keep all red-letter 
days, and some few days besides, which I used to 
dub Nature's holidays. I have had my day. I had 
formerly little to do. So of the little that is left 
of life I may reckon two thirds as dead, for time 
that a man may call his own is his life ; and hard 
work and thinking about it taint even the leisure 
hours, — stain Sunday with work-day contempla- 
tions. This is Sunday; and the headache I have 
is part late hours at work the two preceding nights, 
and part later hours over a consoling pipe after- 
wards. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over 
me. I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with 
me and my household as with the man and his 
consort, — 

*' To them each evening had its glittering star, 
And every sabbath-day its golden sun ! " ^ 

to such Straits am I driven for the life of life. Time ! 
Oh that from that superfluity of holiday-leisure my 

1 Excursion, book v. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 203 

youth wasted, ^'Age might but take some hours youth 
wanted not " ! N. B. — I have left off spirituous 
Hquors for four or more months, with a moral cer- 
tainty of its lasting. Farewell, dear Wordsworth ! 

O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure ! 
From some returned English I hear that not such 
a thing as a counting-house is to be seen in her 
streets, — scarce a desk. Earthquakes swallow up 
this mercantile city and its " gripple merchants," 
as Drayton hath it, " born to be the curse of this 
brave isle " 1 I invoke this, not on account of any 
parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may 
have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit for 
an office. 

Farewell, in haste, from a head that is too ill 
to methodize, a stomach to digest, and all out 
of tune. Better harmonies await you ! 

C. Lamb. 



LV. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

Excuse this maddish letter; I am too tired to 

write in formd. 

1815. 

Dear Wordsworth, — The more I read of your 
two last volumes, the more I feel it necessary to 
make my acknowledgments for them in more than 
one short letter. The " Night Piece," to which you 
refer me, I meant fully to have noticed; but the 
fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from busi- 



204 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

ness, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears 
of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down and 
scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural 
to me, — I mean voluntary pen-work), I lose all 
presential memory of what I had intended to say, 
and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne or 
any casual image, instead of that which I had medi- 
tated (by the way, I must look out V. B. for you). 
So I had meant to have mentioned "Yarrow 
Visited," with that stanza, " But thou that didst 
appear so fair;"^ than which I think no lovelier 
stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry. 
Yet the poem, on the whole, seems condemned to 
leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfac- 
tion, as if you had wronged the feeling with which, 
in what preceded it, you had resolved never to visit 
it, and as if the Muse had determined, in the most 
delicate manner, to make you, and scarce make y on, 
feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which 
has but one exquisite verse in it, — the last but one, 
or the last two : this is all fine, except, perhaps, that 
that of " studious ease and generous cares" has a 
little tinge of the less roma?itic about it. " The Far- 
mer of Tilsbury Vale " is a charming counterpart to 
" Poor Susan," with the addition of that delicacy 
towards aberrations from the strict path which is so. 
fine in the " Old Thief and the Boy by his side," 
which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it 

1 " But thou, that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 
Her delicate creation." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 205 

is the worse for being a repetition ; " Susan " stood 
for the representative of poor Rus in Urbe. There 
was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing 
never to be forgotten, — " bright volumes of vapor," 
etc. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of, at 
all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's 
moral conduct. Susan is a servant-maid. I see her 
trundling her mop, and contemplating the whirling 
phenomenon through blurred optics ; but to term 
her " a poor outcast " seems as much as to say that 
poor Susan was no better than she should be, — which 
I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin 
Goodfellow supports himself without that stick of a 
moral which you have thrown away j but how I can 
be brought in felo de omitiendo for that ending to 
the Boy- builders ^ is a mystery. I can't say posi- 
tively now, I only know that no line oftener or 
readier occurs than that " Light-hearted boys, I will 
build up a Giant with you." It comes naturally 
with a warm holiday and the freshness of the blood. 
It is a perfect summer amulet, that I tie round my 
legs to quicken their motion when I go out a-may- 
ing. (N. B.) I don't often go out amaying; 
must is the tense with me now. Do you take the 
pun ? Young Romilly is divine, the reasons of his 
mother's grief being remediless, — I never saw 
parental love carried up so high, towering above the 
other loves, — Shakspeare had done something for 
the filial in Cordelia, and, by implication, for the 
fatherly too in Lear's resentment ; he left it for you 
to explore the depths of the maternal heart. I get 

1 Better known as " Rural Architecture." 



2o6 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

stupid and flat, and flattering ; what 's the use of 
telhng you what good things you have written, or — 
I hope I may add — that I know them to be good? 
Apropos,wh&n I first opened upon the just-mentioned 
poem, m a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting 
a riddle, " What is good for a bootless bene? " ^ To 
which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest- 
book has it) she answered, " K shoeless pea." It 
was the first joke she ever made. Joke the second 
I make. You distinguish well, in your old preface, 
between the verses of Dr. Johnson, of the " Man in 
the Strand," and that from "The Babes in the 
Wood." I was thinking whether, taking your own 
glorious lines, — 

" And from the love which was in her soul 
For her youthful Roinilly," 

which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have 
no parallel in any of the best old ballads, and just 
altering it to, — 

" And from the great respect she felt 
For Sir Samuel Romilly," 

would not have explained the boundaries of prose 
expression and poetic feeling nearly as well. Ex- 
cuse my levity on such an occasion. I never felt 
deeply in my life if that poem did not make me, 
both lately and when I read it in MS. No alderman 

1 The first line of the poem on Bolton Abbey : — 

" ' What is good for a bootless bene ? ' 

With these dark words begins my tale ; 
And their meaning is, whence can comfort spring 
When Prayer is of no avail ? " 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 207 

ever longed after a haunch of buck venison more 
than I for a spiritual taste of that " White Doe " you 
promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will be when 
dressed, i. e., printed. All things read raw to me in 
MS. ; to compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my 
own writings in that state. The only one which I 
think would not very much win upon me in print is 
" Peter Bell ; " but I am not certain. You ask me 
about your preface. I like both that and the 
supplement, without an exception. The account of 
what you mean by imagination is very valuable to 
me. It will help me to like some things in poetry 
better, which is a little humiliating in me to confess. 
I thought I could not be instructed in that science 
(I mean the critical), as I once heard old ob- 
scene, beastly Peter Pindar, in a dispute on Milton, 
say he thought that if he had reason to value him- 
self upon one thing more than another, it was in 
knowing what good verse was. Who looked over 
your proof-sheets and left ordebo in that line of 
Virgil? 

My brother's picture of Milton is very finely 
painted, — that is, it might have been done by a hand 
next to Vandyke's. It is the genuine Milton, and 
an object of quiet gaze for the half-hour at a time. 
Yet though I am confident there is no better one of 
him, the face does not quite answer to Milton. 
There is a tinge oi petit {ox petite, how do you spell 
it ?) querulousness about it ; yet, hang it ! now I re- 
member better, there is not, — it is calm, melancholy, 
and poetical. One of the copies of the poems you 
sent has precisely the same pleasant blending of a 



2o8 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

sheet of second volume with a sheet of first. I think 
it was page 245 ; but I sent it and had it rectified. 
It gave me, in the first impetus of cutting the leaves, 
just such a cold squelch as going down a plausible 
turning and suddenly reading '^ No thoroughfare." 
Robinson's is entire ; I wish you would write more 
criticism about Spencer, etc. I think I could say 
something about him myself; but. Lord bless me ! 
these " merchants and their spicy drugs," which are 
so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor 
soul and body till I shall forget I ever thought my- 
self a bit of a genius ! I can't even put a few 
thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I engross when 
I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mer- 
cantile transactions, all traffic, exchange of commod- 
ities, intercourse between nations, all the consequent 
civilization, and wealth, and amity, and link of soci- 
ety, and getting rid of prejudices, and knowledge of 
the face of the globe ; and rot the very firs of the 
forest that look so romantic alive, and die into 
desks ! Vale. 

Yours, dear W., and all yours, 

C. Lamb. 

LVI. 

TO SOUTHEY. 

May 6, 1815. 

Dear Southey, — I have received from Longman 
a copy of "Roderick," with the author's compli- 
ments, for which I much thank you. I don't know 
where I shall put all the noble presents I have lately 
received in that way ; the " Excursion," Wordsworth's 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 209 

two last volumes, and now " Roderick," have come 
pouring in upon me like some irruption from Heli- 
con. The story of the brave Maccabee was already, 
you may be sure, familiar to me in all its parts. I 
have, since the receipt of your present, read it quite 
through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I 
don't know whether I ought to say that it has given 
me more pleasure than any of your long poems. 
" Kehama " is doubtless more powerful, but I don't 
feel that firm footing in it that I do in " Roderick ; " 
my imagination goes sinking and floundering in the 
vast spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths ; 
I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies ; my 
moral sense is almost outraged j I can't beUeve, or 
with horror am made to beheve, such desperate 
chances against omnipotences, such disturbances of 
faith to the centre. The more potent, the more 
painful the spell. Jove and his brotherhood of 
gods, tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear, 
for the soul's hopes are not struck at in such con- 
tests ; but your Oriental almighties are too much 
types of the intangible prototype to be meddled with 
without shuddering. One never connects what are 
called the " attributes " with Jupiter. I mention only 
what diminishes my delight at the wonder-workings 
of" Kehama," not what impeaches its power, which 
I confess with trembling. 

But " Roderick " is a comfortable poem. It re- 
minds me of the delight I took in the first reading 
of the " Joan of Arc." It is maturer and better 
than that, though not better to me now than that 
was then. It suits me better than "Madoc." I am 

14 



2IO LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a timid 
imagination, I am afraid ; I do not wilHngly admit 
of strange behefs or out-of-the-way creeds or places. 
I never read books of travel, at least not farther 
than Paris or Rome. I can just endure Moors, 
because of their connection as foes with Christians ; 
but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and 
all that tribe, I hate ; I believe I fear them in some 
manner. A Mahometan turban on the stage, though 
enveloping some well-known face (Mr. Cook or Mr. 
Maddox, whom I see another day good Christian 
and English waiters, innkeepers, etc.), does not give 
me pleasure unalloyed. I am a Christian, English- 
man, Londoner, Templar. God help me when I 
come to put off these snug relations, and to get 
abroad into the world to come ! I shall be like 
the crow on the sand, as Wordsworth has it ; but I 
won't think on it, — no need, I hope, yet. 

The parts I have been most pleased with, both on 
first and second readings, perhaps, are Florinda's 
palliation of Roderick's crime, confessed to him in 
his disguise ; the retreat of Pelayo's family first dis- 
covered ; his being made king, — " For acclamation 
one form must serve, moi'-e solemn for the breach of 
old observances.^' Roderick's vow is extremely fine, 
and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso, — 

" Towards the troop he spread his arms, 
As if the expanded soul diffused itself, 
And carried to all spirits, with the act, 
Its affluent inspiration." 

It Struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last 
lines might have been suggested to you by the Car- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 21 1 

toon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is that a better 
motto or guide to that famous attitude can nowhere 
be found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of that 
violent but dignified motion. 

I must read again Landor's "Julian;" I have 
not read it some time. I think he must have failed 
in Roderick, for I remember nothing of him, nor of 
any distinct character as a character, — only fine- 
sounding passages. I remember thinking also he 
had chosen a point of time after the event, as it 
were, for Roderick survives to no use ; but my 
memory is weak, and I will not wrong a fine poem 
by trusting to it. 

The notes to your poem I have not read again ; 
but it will be a take-downable book on my shelf, and 
they will serve sometimes at breakfast, or times too 
light for the text to be duly appreciated, — though 
some of 'em, one of the serpent Penance, is serious 
enough, now I think on 't. 

Of Coleridge I hear nothing, nor of the Morgans. 
I hope to have him like a reappearing star, stand- 
ing up before me some time when least expected in 
London, as has been the case whilere. 

I am doing no\\\v[\g (as the phrase is) but reading 
presents, and walk away what of the day-hours I can 
get from hard occupation. Pray accept once more 
my hearty thanks and expression of pleasure for 
your remembrance of me. My sister desires her 
kind respects to Mrs. S. and to all at Keswick. 
Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 



212 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



LVII. 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON.i 

October 19, 181 5. 

Dear Miss H., — I am forced to be the replier to 
your letter, for Mary has been ill, and gone from 
home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me 
very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but 
there is no rest but at one's own fireside ; and there 
is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the 
worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. 
She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. 
The return of her disorder has been frightfully soon 
this time, with scarce a six-months' interval. I am 
almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. 
House was partly the cause of her illness ; but one 
always imputes it to the cause next at hand, — more 
probably it comes from some cause we have no con- 
trol over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great sHces 
out of the time, the little time, we shall have to live 
together. I don't know but the recurrence of these 
illnesses might help me to sustain her death better 
than if we had had no partial separations. But I 
won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or 
forget that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in 
a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or 
sitting in the front row of the pit at Drury Lane, or 
taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at 
the outside of them, at least, if not to be tempted 

1 Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 213 

in. Then we forget we are assailable ; we are 
strong for the time as rocks, — " the wind is tem- 
pered to the shorn Lambs." Poor C. Lloyd and 
poor Priscilla ! I feel I hardly feel enough for him ; 
my own calamities press about me, and involve me 
in a thick integument not to be reached at by other 
folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can, all the 
kindness I can, towards you all. God bless you ! 
I hear nothing from Coleridge. 

Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 

LVIII. 

TO MANNING. 

December 25, 181 5. 
Dear old Friend and Absentee, — This is Christ- 
mas Day, 1 815, with us ; what it may be with you I 
don't know, — the 1 2th of June next year, perhaps j 
and if it should be the consecrated season with you, 
I don't see how you can keep it. You have no 
turkeys ; you would not desecrate the festival by 
offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of 
the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes 
all around my nostrils at this moment from a thou- 
sand firesides. Then what puddings have you? 
Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, 
or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves (that 
must be the substitute) in? What memorials you 
can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped 
missionary or two may keep up the thin idea of 
Lent and the wilderness ; but what standing evi- 



214 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

dence have you of the Nativity ? 'T is our rosy- 
cheeked, homestalled divines, whose faces shine to 
the tune of tuito us a child was born, — faces fragrant 
with the mince-pies of half a century, that alone can 
authenticate the cheerful mystery. I feel, I feel my 
bowels refreshed with the holy tide; my zeal is 
great against the unedified heathen. Down with the 
Pagodas ; down with the idols, — Ching-chong-fo 
and his foolish priesthood ! Come out of Babylon, 
oh my friend, for her time is come, and the child 
that is native, and the Proselyte of her gates, shall 
kindle and smoke together ! And in sober sense 
what makes you so long from among us. Manning? 
You must not expect to see the same England again 
which you left. 

Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden 
into dust, the face of the Western world quite 
changed ; your friends have all got old, those you 
left blooming, myself (who am one of the few that 
remember you) — those golden hairs which you rec- 
ollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery and 
gray. Mary has been dead and buried many years ; 
she desired to be buried in the silk gown you 
sent her. Rickman, that you remember active and 
strong, now walks out supported by a servant-maid 
and a stick. Martin Burney is a very old man. 
The other day an aged woman knocked at my door 
and pretended to my acquaintance. It was long be- 
fore I had the most distant cognition of her ; but at 
last together we made her out to be Louisa, the 
daughter of Mrs. Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, 
who had been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 215 

whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic 
writer of the last century. St. Paul's church is a 
heap of ruins ; the Monument is n't half so high as 
you knew it, divers parts being successively taken 
down which the ravages of time had rendered dan- 
gerous ; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one 
knows whither, — and all this has taken place while 
you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should 

be spelled with a or a . For aught I see, 

you had almost as well remain where you are, and 
not come, like a Struldbrug, into a world where few 
were born when you went away. Scarce here and 
there one will be able to make out your face \ all 
your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obso- 
lete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of 
the last age. Your way of mathematics has already 
given way to a new method which, after all, is, I be- 
lieve, the old doctrine of Maclaurin new-vamped up 
with what he borrowed of the negative quantity of 
fluxions from Euler. 

Poor Godwin ! I was passing his tomb the other 
day in Cripplegate churchyard. There are some 

verses upon it, written by Miss , which if I 

thought good enough I would send you. He was 
one of those who would have hailed your return, not 
with boisterous shouts and clamors, but with the 
complacent gratulations of a philosopher anxious to 
promote knowledge, as leading to happiness ; but 
his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in 
Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having 
lived just long enough to close the eyes of Words- 
worth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or 



2l6 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

two before. Poor Col., but two days before he 
died he wrote to a bookseller proposing an epic 
poem on the *' Wandering of Cain/' in twenty-four 
books. It is said he has left behind him more than 
forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, 
and divinity ; but few of them in a state of comple- 
tion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up 
spices. You see what mutation the busy hand of 
Time has produced, while you have consumed in 
foolish, voluntary exile that time which might have 
gladdened your friends, benefited your country — 
But reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched 
relics, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to 
your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to 
recognize you. We will shake withered hands to- 
gether, and talk of old things, — of St. Mary's church 
and the barber's opposite, where the young students 
in mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crisp, that 
kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's shop in 
Trumpington Street, and for aught I know resides 
there still \ for I saw the name up in the last journey 
I took there with my sister just before she died. I 
suppose you heard that I had left the India House 
and gone into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over the 
bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and 
homely ; but you shall be welcome to it. You like 
oysters, and to open them yourself; I '11 get you 
some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, God- 
win's old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces 
you used to make.^ 

Come as soon as you can. C. Lamb. 

1 The reversal of this serio-humorous mingling of fiction 
and forecast will be found in the next letter. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 217 

LIX. 

TO MANNING. 

December 26, 181 5. 
Dear Manning, — Following your brother's exam- 
ple, I have just ventured one letter to Canton, and am 
now hazarding another (not exactly a duplicate) to 
St. Helena. The first was full of unprobable roman- 
tic fictions, fitting the remoteness of the mission it 
goes upon ; in the present I mean to confine myself 
nearer to truth as you come nearer home. A cor- 
respondence with the uttermost parts of the earth 
necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy ; it sets 
the brain agoing ; but I can think on the half-way 
house tranquillyo Your friends, then, are not all 
dead or grown forgetful of you through old age, — 
as that lying letter asserted, anticipating rather what 
must happen if you keep tarrying on forever on the 
skirts of creation, as there seemed a danger of your 
doing, — but they are all tolerably well, and in full 
and perfect comprehension of what is meant by 
Manning's coming home again. Mrs. Kenney never 
let her tongue run riot more than in remembrances 
of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can 
only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary re- 
serves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as 
the false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick and 
span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. 
I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a 
surfeiting identity. This very night I am going to 



2l8 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

leave off tobacco / Surely there must be some other 
world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be 
realized. The soul hath not her generous aspirings 
implanted in her in vain. One that you knew, and 
I think the only one of those friends we knew much 
of in common, has died in earnest. Poor Priscilla ! 
Her brother Robert is also dead, and several of the 
grown-up brothers and sisters, in the compass of a 
very few years. Death has not otherwise meddled 
much in families that I know. Not but he has 
his horrid eye upon us, and is whetting his infernal 
feathered dart every instant, as you see him truly 
pictured in that impressive moral picture, " The 
good man at the hour of death." I have in trust 
to put in the post four letters from Diss, and one 
from Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will accom- 
pany this safe, and one from Lynn, and the one be- 
fore spoken of from me, to Canton. But we all hope 
that these letters may be waste paper. I don't know 
why I have foreborne writing so long ; but it is such 
a forlorn hope to send a scrap of paper straggling 
over wide oceans. And yet I know when you come 
home, I shall have you sitting before me at our fire- 
side just as if you had never been away. In such an 
instant does the return of a person dissipate all the 
weight of imaginary perplexity from distance of time 
and space ! I '11 promise you good oysters. Cory 
is dead, that kept the shop opposite St. Dunstan's, 
but the tougher materials of the shop survive the 
perishing frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to 
flourish there under as good auspices. Poor Cory ! 
But if you will absent yourself twenty years together, 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 219 

you must not expect numerically the same population 
to congratulate your return which wetted the sea- 
beach with their tears when you went away. Have 
you recovered the breathless stone-staring astonish- 
ment into which you must have been thrown upon 
learning at landing that an Emperor of France was 
living at St. Helena? What an event in the solitude 
of the seas, — like finding a fish's bone at the top 
of Plinlimmon; but these things are nothing in 
our Western world. Novelties cease to affect. 
Come and try what your presence can. 
God bless you ! Your old friend, 

C. Lamb* 



LX. 

TO WORDSWORTH 

April 9, 1816. 

Dear Wordsworth, — Thanks for the books you 
have given me, and for all the books you mean to 
give me. I will bind up the " Political Sonnets " 
and "Ode" according to your suggestion. I have 
not bound the poems yet ; I wait till people have 
done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain 
and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, and 
people may come and read them at chain's length. 
For of those who borrow, some read slow; some 
mean to read but don't read ; and some neither 
read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an 
opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money- 
borrowing friends the justice to say that there is 
nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in 



220 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

them ; when they borrow my money they never fail 
to make use of it. Coleridge has been here about a 
fortnight. His health is tolerable at present, though 
beset with temptations. In the first place, the Cov- 
ent Garden Manager has declined accepting his 
Tragedy/ though (having read it) I see no reason 
upon earth why it might not have run a very fair 
chance, though it certainly wants a prominent part 
for a Miss O'Neil or a Mr. Kean. However, he is 
going to write to-day to Lord Byron to get it to 
Drury. Should you see Mrs. C, who has just writ- 
ten to C. a letter, which I have given him, it will be 
as well to say nothing about its fate till some answer 
is shaped from Drury. He has two volumes printing 
together at Bristol, both finished as far as the com- 
position goes ; the latter containing his fugitive 
poems, the former his Literary Life. Nature, who 
conducts every creature by instinct to its best end, 
has skilfully directed C. to take up his abode at a 
Chemist's Laboratory in Norfolk Street. She might 
as well have sent a Helliio Librorum for cure to the 
Vatican. God keep him inviolate among the traps 
and pitfalls ! He has done pretty well as yet.^ 

Tell Miss Hutchinson my sister is every day wish- 
ing to be quietly sitting down to answer her very kind 
letter ; but while C. stays she can hardly find a quiet 
time. God bless him ! 

Tell Mrs. Wordsworth her postscripts are always 
agreeable. They are legible too. Your manual- 
graphy is terrible, — dark as Lycophron. " Likeli- 

1 Zapolya. 

2 Lamb alludes, of course, to Coleridge's opium habit. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 221 

hood," for instance, is thus typified. ... 1 should 
not wonder if the constant making out of such para- 
graphs is the cause of that weakness in Mrs. W.'s 
eyes, as she is tenderly pleased to express it. Dor- 
othy, I hear, has mounted spectacles ; so you have 
deoculated two of your dearest relations in Ufe. 
Well, God bless you, and continue to give you 
power to write with a finger of power upon our 
hearts what you fail to impress, in corresponding 
lucidness, upon our outward eyesight ! 

Mary's love to all ; she is quite well. 

I am called off" to do the deposits on Cotton 
Wool. But why do I relate this to you, who want 
faculties to comprehend the great mystery of de- 
posits, of interest, of warehouse rent, and contingent 

fund? Adieu! 

C. Lamb. 



LXI. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

April 26, 18 16. 

Dear W., — I have just finished the pleasing task 

of correcting the revise of the poems and letter.^ I 

hope they will come out faultless. One blunder I 

saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had 

1 Wordsworth's " Letter to a Friend of Burns " (London, 

1816). 

" Wordsworth had been consulted by a friend of Burns as 
to the best mode of vindicating the reputation of the poet, 
which, it was alleged, had been much injured by the publica- 
tion of Dr. Currie's * Life and Correspondence of Burns.' " — 

AiNGER. 



222 LETTEBS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

printed battered for battened, this last not conveying 
any distinct sense to his gaping soul. The Reader 
(as they call 'em) had discovered it, and given it the 
marginal brand ; but the substitutory n had not yet 
appeared. I accompanied his notice with a most 
pathetic address to the printer not to neglect the 
correction. I know how such a blunder would 
" batter at your peace." With regard to the works, 
the Letter I read with unabated satisfaction. Such 
a thing was wanted, called for. The parallel of 
Cotton with Burns I heartily approve. Iz. Walton 
hallows any page in which his reverend name ap- 
pears. " Duty archly bending to purposes of general 
benevolence " is exquisite. The poems I endeav- 
ored not to understand, but to read them with my 
eye alone ; and I think I succeeded. (Some people 
will do that when they come out, you '11 say.) As if I 
were to luxuriate to-morrow at some picture-gallery 
I was never at before, and, going by to-day by 
chance, found the door open, and having but five 
minutes to look about me, peeped in, — just such a 
chastised peep I took with my mind at the lines my 
luxuriating eye was coursing over unrestrained, not 
to anticipate another day's fuller satisfaction. Cole- 
ridge is printing " Christabel," by Lord Byron's 
recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a 
vision, " Kubla Khan," which said vision he repeats 
so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven 
and elysian bowers into my parlor while he sings or 
says it ; but there is an observation, " Never tell thy 
dreams," and I am almost afraid that " Kubla 
Khan " is an owl that won't bear daylight. I fear 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 223 

lest it should be discovered, by the lantern of typog- 
raphy and clear reducting to letters, no better than 
nonsense or no sense. When I was young, I used 
to chant with ecstasy " Mild Arcadians ever bloom- 
ing," till somebody told me it was meant to be non- 
sense. Even yet I have a lingering attachment to 
it, and I think it better than " Windsor Forest," 
" Dying Christian's Address," etc. Coleridge has 
sent his tragedy to D. L. T. ; it cannot be acted this 
season, and by their manner of receiving I hope he 
will be able to alter it to make them accept it for 
next. He is at present under the medical care of 
a Mr. Oilman (Killman?) at Highgate, where he 
plays at leaving off laud — m. I think his essentials 
not touched ; he is very bad, but then he wonder- 
fully picks up another day, and his face, when he 
repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory, — an arch- 
angel a little damaged. Will Miss H. pardon our 
not replying at length to her kind letter? We are 
not quiet enough; Morgan is with us every day, 
going betwixt Highgate and the Temple. Coleridge 
is absent but four miles ; and the neighborhood of 
such a man is as exciting as the presence of fifty 
ordinary persons. 'Tis enough to be within the 
whiff and wind of his genius for us not to possess 
our souls in quiet. If I lived with him or the Au- 
thor of the " Excursion,'' I should, in a very little time, 
lose my own identity, and be dragged along in the 
current of other people's thoughts, hampered in a 
net. How cool I sit in this office, with no possible 
interruption further than what I may term matei^alf 
There is not as much metaphysics in thirty-six of 



224 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the people here as there is in the first page of 
Locke's " Treatise on the Human Understanding," or 
as much poetry as in any ten Hnes of the '' Pleasures 
of Hope," or more natural " Beggar's Petition." I 
never entangle myself in any of their speculations. 
Interruptions, if I try to write a letter even, I have 
dreadful. Just now, within four lines, I was called 
off for ten minutes to consult dusty old books for the 
settlement of obsolete errors. I hold you a guinea 
you don't find the chasm where I left off, so excel- 
lently the wounded sense closed again and was 
healed. 

N. B. — Nothing said above to the contrary, but 
that I hold the personal presence of the two men- 
tioned potent spirits at a rate as high as any ; but I 
pay dearer : what amuses others robs me of myself ; 
my mind is positively discharged into their greater 
currents, but flows with a willing violence. As to 
your question about work, it is far less oppressive to 
me than it was, from circumstances ; it takes all the 
golden part of the day away, a solid lump, from ten 
to four : but it does not kill my peace, as before. 
Some day or other I shall be in a taking again. My 
head aches, and you have had enough. God bless 
you ! 

C. Lamb. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 225 

LXII. 

TO H. DODWELL.1 

July, 1 81 6. 

My dear Fellow, — I have been in a lethargy 
this long while, and forgotten London, Westminster, 
Marybone, Paddington, — they all went clean out of 
my head, till happening to go to a neighbor's in this 
good borough of Calne, for want of whist-players we 
fell upon Commerce: the word awoke me to a re- 
membrance of my professional avocations and the 
long-continued strife which I have been these twenty- 
four years endeavoring to compose between those 
grand Irreconcilables, Cash and Commerce ; I in- 
stantly called for an almanac, which with some diffi- 
culty was procured at a fortune-teller's in the vicinity 
(for happy hohday people here, having nothing to 
do, keep no account of time), and found that by dint 
of duty I must attend in Leadenhall on Wednesy. 
morning next ; and shall attend accordingly. Does 
Master Hannah give maccaroons still, and does he 
fetch the Cobbetts from my attic? Perhaps it 
would n't be too much trouble for him to drop the 
enclosed up at my aforesaid chamber, and any let- 
ters, etc., with it ; but the enclosed should go with- 
out delay. N. B. — He isn't to fetch Monday's 
Cobbett, but it is to wait my reading when I come 

1 A fellow-clerk in the India House. This charming 
letter, written evidently during a vacation trip, was first pub- 
lished entire in Canon Ainger's edition (1887) of Lamb's 
Letters. 

15 



226 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

back. Heigh-ho ! Lord have mercy upon me, 
how many does two and two make ? I am afraid I 
shall make a poor clerk in future, I am spoiled with 
rambling among haycocks and cows and pigs. Bless 
me ! I had like to have forgot (the air is so tem- 
perate and oblivious here) to say I have seen your 
brother, and hope he is doing well in the finest spot 
of the world. More of these things when I return. 
Remember me to the gentlemen, — I forget names. 
Shall I find all my letters at my rooms on Tuesday? 
If you forget to send 'em never mind, for I don't 
much care for reading and writing now; I shall 
come back again by degrees, I suppose, into my 
former habits. How is Bruce de Ponthieu, and 
Porcher and Co.? — the tears come into my eyes 
when I think how long I have neglected — . 

Adieu ! ye fields, ye shepherds and — herdesses, 
and dairies and cream-pots, and fairies and dances 
upon the green. 

I come, I come. Don't drag me so hard by the 
hair of my head, Genius of British India ! I know 
my hour is come, Faustus must give up his soul, O 
Lucifer, O Mephistopheles ! Can you make out 
what all this letter is about? I am afraid to look 
it over. 

Ch. Lamb. 

LXIII. 

TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 

February i?>, i8i8. 

My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, — I have repeat- 
edly taken pen in hand to answer your kind 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 227 

letter. My sister should more properly have done 
it ; but she having failed, I consider myself answer- 
able for her debts. I am now trying to do it in the 
midst of commercial noises, and with a quill which 
seems more ready to ghde into arithmetical figures 
and names of gourds, cassia, cardamoms, aloes, gin- 
ger, or tea, than into kindly responses and friendly 
recollections. The reason why I cannot write letters 
at home is that I am never alone. Plato's — (I 
write to W. W. now) — Plato's double-animal parted 
never longed more to be reciprocally re-united in 
the system of its first creation than I sometimes do 
to be but for a moment single and separate. Except 
my morning's walk to the office, which is like tread- 
ing on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. 
I cannot walk home from office, but some officious 
friend offers his unwelcome courtesies to accompany 
me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit 
and gravely cast up sums in great books, or compare 
sum with sum, and write " paid " against this, and 
"unpaid" against t'other, and yet reserve in some 
corner of my mind " some darling thoughts all my 
own," — faint memory of some passage in a book, 
or the tone of an absent friend's voice, — a snatch 
of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's 
divine plain face. The two operations might be 
going on at the same time without thwarting, as the 
sun's two motions (earth's I mean) ; or as I some- 
times turn round till I am giddy, in my back parlor, 
while my sister is walking longitudinally in the front ; 
or as the shoulder of veal twists round with the spit, 
while the smoke wreathes up the chimney. But 



2 28 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

there are a set of amateurs of the Belles Lettres, — 
the gay science, — who come to me as a sort of 
rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, of British 
Institutions, Lalla Rookhs, etc., — what Coleridge 
said at the lecture last night, — who have the form 
of reading men, but, for any possible use reading 
can be to them but to talk of, might as well have 
been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out 
the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as the 
pyramids will last, before they should find it. These 
pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals, 
perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little salutary 
warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if 
I take a newspaper, cramming in between my own 
free thoughts and a column of figures, which had 
come to an amicable compromise but for them. 
Their noise ended, one of them, as I said, accom- 
panies me home, lest I should be solitary for a 
moment. He at length takes his welcome leave at 
the door ; up I go, mutton on table, hungry as hun- 
ter, hope to forget my cares and bury them in the 
agreeable abstraction of mastication ; knock at the 
door ! In comes Mr. Hazlitt, or Martin Burney, or 
Morgan Demi-gorgon,^ or my brother, or somebody, 
to prevent my eating alone, — a process absolutely 
necessary to my poor wretched digestion. Oh, the 
pleasure of eating alone ! Eating my dinner alone, 
— let me think of it ! But in they come, and make 
it absolutely necessary that I should open a bottle 
of orange ; for my meat turns into stone when any 
one dines with me, if I have not wine. Wine can 
^ John Morgan. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 229 

mollify stones ; then that wine turns into acidity, 
acerbity, misanthropy, a hatred of my interrupters 
(God bless 'em ! I love some of 'em dearly) j and 
with the hatred, a still greater aversion to their going 
away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon me, 
choking and deadening; but worse is the deader 
dry sand they leave me on, if they go before bed- 
time. Come never, I would say to these spoilers of 
my dinner ; but if you come, never go ! The fact 
is, this interruption does not happen very often; 
but every time it comes by surprise, that present 
bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary 
stifling consequences, follows. Evening company 
I should always like, had I any mornings ; but I am 
saturated with human faces {divine forsooth !) and 
voices all the golden morning ; and five evenings in 
a week would be as much as I should covet to be 
in company; but I assure you that is a wonderful 
week in which I can get two, or one, to myself. I 
am never C. L., but always C. L. & Co. He who 
thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve 
me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being 
never by myself! I forget bed-time; but even 
there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. 
Once a week, generally some singular evening that, 
being alone, I go to bed at the hour I ought always 
to be a-bed, just close to my bed-room window is 
the club-room of a public-house, where a set of 
singers — I take them to be chorus-singers of the two 
theatres (it must be both of them) — begin their 
orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) 
who, being limited by their talents to the burden 



230 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

of the song at the playhouses, in revenge have got 
the common popular airs by Bishop or some cheap 
composer, arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung 
all in chorus, — at least, I never can catch any of the 
text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish 
choral howl at the tail on 't. " That fiiry being 
quenched," — the howl I mean, -^ a burden suc- 
ceeds of shouts and clapping and knocking of the 
table. At length over-tasked nature drops under it, 
and escapes for a few hours into the society of the 
sweet silent creatures of dreams, which go away with 
mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I think 
of the words Christabel's father used (bless me ! I 
have dipt in the wrong ink) to say every morning 
by way of variety when he awoke, — 

" Every knell, the Baron saith. 
Wakes us up to a world of death," — 

or something like it. All I mean by this senseless 
interrupted tale is, that by my central situation I am 
a little over-companied. Not that I have any ani- 
mosity against the good creatures that are so anxious 
to drive away the harpy Solitude from me. I like 'em, 
and cards, and a cheerful glass ; but I mean merely 
to give you an idea, between office confinement and 
after- office society, how little time I can call my own. 
I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an in- 
ference. I would not, that I know of, have it other- 
wise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some 
of my faces and voices for the faces and voices 
which a late visitation brought most welcome, and car- 
ried away, leaving regret, but more pleasure, — even 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 231 

a kind of gratitude, — at being so often favored with 
that kind northern visitation. My London faces and 
noises don't hear me, — I mean no disrespect, or I 
should explain myself, that instead of their return 
220 times a year, and the return of W. W., etc., 
seven times in 104 weeks, some more equal distri- 
bution might be found. I have scarce room to put 
in Mary's kind love and my poor name. 

C. Lamb. 

W. H[aziitt]. goes on lecturing against W. W., 
and making copious use of quotations from said W. 
W. to give a zest to said lectures. S. T. C. is lectur- 
ing with success. I have not heard either him or 
H. ; but I dined with S. T. C. at Oilman's a Sunday 
or two since ; and he was well and in good spirits. 
I mean to hear some of the course ; but lectures are 
not much to my taste, whatever the lecturer may be. 
If read, they are dismal flat, and you can't think 
why you are brought together to hear a man read 
his works, which you could read so much better at 
leisure yourself ; if delivered extempore, I am always 
in pain lest the gift of utterance should suddenly 
fail the orator in the middle, as it. did me at the 
dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern. 
"Gentlemen," said I, and there I stopped; the rest 
my feelings were under the necessity of supplying. 
Mrs. Wordsworth will go on, kindly haunting us with 
visions of seeing the lakes once more, which never 
can be reahzed. Between us there is a great gulf, 
not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, 
I hope, as there seemed to be between me and that 



232 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

gentleman concerned in the stamp-office that I so 
strangely recoiled from at Haydon's. I think I had 
an instinct that he v/as the head of an office. I hate 
all such people, — accountants' deputy accountants. 
The mere abstract notion of the East India Com- 
pany, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather 
poetical ; but as she makes herself manifest by the 
persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as 
the scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I 
thought, after abridging us of all our red-letter days, 
they had done their worst ; but I was deceived in 
the length to which heads of offices, those true 
liberty-haters, can go, — they are the tyrants, not 
Ferdinand, nor Nero. By a decree passed this 
week, they have abridged us of the immemorially 
observed custom of going at one o'clock of a Satur- 
day, — the little shadow of a holiday left us. Dear 
W. W,, be thankful for liberty. 



LXIV. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

May, 18 19. 

Dear Wordsworth, — I received a copy of " Peter 
Bell " 1 a week ago, and I hope the author will not 

1 Lamb alludes to a parody, ridiculing Wordsworth, by 
J. Hamilton Reynolds. The verses were entitled " Peter 
Bell : A Lyrical Ballad ; " and their drift and spirit may be 
inferred from the following lines from the preface : " It is 
now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote 
some of tlie most perfect compositions (except certain pieces 
I have written in my later days) that ever dropped from 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 233 

be offended if I say I do not much relish it. The 
humor, if it is meant for humor, is forced ; and then 
the price, — sixpence would have been dear for it. 
Mind, I do not m&^x\your " Peter Bell," but a " Peter 
Bell," which preceded it about a week, and is in 
every bookseller's shop-window in London, the type 
and paper nothing differing from the true one, the 
preface signed W. W., and the supplementary pre- 
face quoting as the author's words an extract from 
the supplementary preface to the " Lyrical Ballads." 
Is there no law against these rascals ? I would have 
this Lambert Simnel whipped at the cart's tail. Who 
started the spurious " P. B." I have not heard. I 
should guess, one of the sneering brothers, the vile 
Smiths; but I have heard no name mentioned. 
"Peter Bell" (not the mock one) is excellent, — 
for its matter, I mean. I cannot say the style of it 
quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. The auditors, 
to whom it is feigned to be told, do not arride me. 
I had rather it had been told me, the reader, at once. 
" Hart-leap Well " is the tale for me ; in matter as 
good as this, in manner infinitely before it, in my 
poor judgment. Why did you not add "• The Wag- 
oner"? Have I thanked you, though, yet for 
" Peter Bell " ? I would not not have it for a good 
deal of money. Coleridge is very foolish to scribble 
about books. Neither his tongue nor fingers are very 

poetical pen. My heart hath been right and powerful all 
its years. I never thought an evil or a weak thought in my 
life. It has been my aim and my achievement to deduce 
moral thunder from buttercups, daisies, celandines, and (as a 
poet scarcely inferior to myself hath it) ' such small deer,' " 
etc. 



234 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

retentive. But I shall not say anything to him about 
it. He would only begin a very long story with a 
very long face, and I see him far too seldom to tease 
him with affairs of business or conscience when I do 
see him. He never comes near our house, and when 
we go to see him he is generally writing or thinking ; 
he is writing in his study till the dinner comes, and 
that is scarce over before the stage summons us 
away. The mock " P. B." had only this effect on 
me, that after twice reading it over in hopes to find 
something diverting in it, I reached your two books 
off the shelf, and set into a steady reading of them, 
till I had nearly finished both before I went to bed, — 
the two of your last edition, of course, I mean. 
And in the morning I awoke determined to take 
down the " Excursion." I wish the scoundrel imi- 
tator could know this. But why waste a wish on 
him ? I do not believe that paddling about with a 
stick in a pond, and fishing up a dead author, whom 
his intolerable wrongs had driven to that deed of 
desperation, would turn the heart of one of these 
obtuse literary Bells. There is no Cock for such 
Peters, damn 'em ! I am glad this aspiration came 
upon the red-ink line.^ It is more of a bloody 
curse. I have delivered over your other presents 
to Alsager and G. Dyer. A., I am sure, will value 
it, and be proud of the hand from which it came. 
To G. D. a poem is a poem, — his own as good as 
anybody's, and, God bless him ! anybody's as good 
as his own ; for I do not think h? has the most dis- 

1 The original letter is actually written in two inks, — 
alternate black and red. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 235 

tant guess of the possibility of one poem being better 
than another. The gods, by denying him the very 
faculty itself of discrimination, have effectually cut 
off every seed of envy in his bosom. But with envy 
they excited curiosity also ; and if you wish the copy 
again, which you destined for him, I think I shall be 
able to find it again for you on his third shelf, where 
he stuffs his presentation copies, uncut, in shape and 
matter resembling a lump of dry dust ; but on care- 
fully removing that stratum, a thing like a pamphlet 
will emerge. I have tried this with fifty different 
poetical works that have been given G. D. in return 
for as many of his own performances ; and I confess 
I never had any scruple in taking my own again, 
wherever I found it, shaking the adherences off; 
and by this means one copy of ^ my works ' served 
for G. D., — and, with a little dusting, was made over 
to my good friend Dr. Geddes, who little thought 
whose leavings he was taking when he made me 
that graceful bow. By the way, the Doctor is the 
only one of my acquaintance who bows gracefully, 
— my town acquaintance, I mean. How do you 
like my way of writing with two inks ? I think it is 
pretty and motley. Suppose Mrs. W. adopts it, the 
next time she holds the pen for you. My dinner 
waits. I have no time to indulge any longer in these 
laborious curiosities. God bless you, and cause to 
thrive and burgeon whatsoever you write, and fear 
no inks of miserable poetasters. 
Yours truly, 

Charles Lamb. 
Mary's love. 



236 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

LXV. 

TO MANNING. 

May 28, 18 1 9. 
My dear M., — I want to know how your brother 
is, if you have heard lately. I want to know about 
you. I wish you were nearer. How are my cousins, 
the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and Farmer 
Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman. 
" Hail, Mackery End ! " 1 

This is a fragment of a blank-verse poem which I 
once meditated, but got no farther. The E. I. H. 
has been thrown into a quandary by the strange 
phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have 
known, man and madman, twenty-seven years, he 
being elder here than myself by nine years and 
more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half- 
headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, in- 
offensive chap, a little too fond of the creature, — 
who isn't at times? But Tommy had not brains to 
work off an overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next 
morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the 
other morning drunk with last night and with a 
superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out 
from bed. He came staggering under his double 
burden, like trees in Java, bearing at once blossom, 
fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some 
other traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as 
the bluest firmament. Some wretched calico that he 

^ See the Elia essay, " Mackery End, in H — shire." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 237 

had mopped his poor oozy front with, had rendered up 
its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent 
to wash it, but swore it was characteristic, for he 
was going to the sale of indigo ; and set up a laugh 
which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were 
competent to. It was like a thousand people laugh- 
ing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined afterwards 
that the whole office had been laughing at him, so 
strange did his own sounds strike upon his /^^;/sen- 
sorium. But Tommy has laughed his last laugh, 
and awoke the next day to find himself reduced 
from an abused income of ;£6oo per annum to one 
sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' tolerably 
good service. The quahty of mercy was not strained 
in his behalf; the gentle dews dropped not on him 
from heaven. It just came across me that I was 
writing to Canton. Will you drop in to-morrow 
night? Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not 
cheat us. Mrs. Gold is well, but proves " un- 
coined," as the lovers about Wheathampstead 
would say. 

I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down 
to a quiet letter for many years. I have not been 
interrupted above four times. I wrote a letter the 
other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and 
you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. 
Next Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection ! 
Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and 
the following holiday in the fields a-maying. All of 
those pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, 
everlasting dead desk, — how it weighs the spirit of 
a gentleman down ! This dead wood of the desk in- 



238 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Stead of your living trees ! But then, again, I hate the 
Joskins, a name for Hertfordshire biDnpkins. Each 
state of hfe has its inconvenience ; but then, again, 
mine has more than one. Not that I repine, or 
grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and 
drink, and decent apparel, — I shall, at least, when I 
get a new hat. 

A red-haired man just interrupted me. He has 
broke the current of my thoughts. I have n't a 
word to add. I don't know why I send this letter, 
but I have had a hankering to hear about you some 
days. Perhaps it will go off before your reply 
comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was ever 
welcomer from you, from Paris or Macao. 

C. Lamb. 



LXVI. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

November 25, 18 19. 
Dear Miss Wordsworth, — You will think me 
negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy ^ be- 
fore I ventured to express a prediction. Till yester- 
day I had barely seen him, — Virgilium tantum 
vidi ; but yesterday he gave us his small company to 
a bullock's heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of 
promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm ; so far 
I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too 
little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, 

1 Wordsworth's third son. He was at the Charter-house 
School in London, and the Lambs had invited him to spend 
a half holiday with them. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 239 

like Lord Foppington, the " natural sprouts of his 
own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly 
awak^ I am ill at remembering other people's bon 
mots, but the following are a few. Being taken over 
Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no 
mountains, we had a fine river, at least, — which was 
a touch of the comparative ; but then he added in 
a strain which augured less for his future abilities as 
a political economist, that he supposed they must 
take at least a pound a week toll. Like a curious 
naturalist, he inquired if the tide did not come up 
a httle salty. This being satisfactorily answered, 
he put another question, as to the flux and reflux ; 
which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully 
solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered 
something about its getting up an hour sooner and 
sooner every day, he sagely replied, " Then it must 
come to the same thing at last," — which was a 
speech worthy of an infant HaUey ! The lion in the 
'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard, 
— so impossible is it for Nature, in any of her works, 
to come up to the standard of a child's imagination ! 
The whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were 
dead ; and on particular inquiry, his old friend the 
orang-outang had gone the way of all flesh also. 
The grand tiger was also sick, and expected in no 
short time to exchange this transitory world for an- 
other or none. But, again, there was a golden eagle 
(I do not mean that of Charing) which did much 
arride and console him. William's genius, I take 
it, leans a little to the figurative ; for being at play 
at tricktrack (a kind of minor billiard-table which 



240 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh 
our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at) , not 
being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed ^t, he 
cried out, " I cannot hit that beast." Now, the 
balls are usually called men, but he felicitously hit 
upon a middle term, — a term of approximation and 
imaginative reconciliation ; a something where the 
two ends of the brute matter (ivory) and their 
human and rather violent personification into men 
might meet, as I take it, — illustrative of that excel- 
lent remark in a certain preface about imagination, 
explaining " Like a sea-beast that had crawled forth 
to sun himself! " Not that I accuse William Minor 
of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have 
come ex t7'aduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof 
from any source of imitation, and purposely to 
remain ignorant of what mighty poets have done in 
this kind before him ; for being asked if his father 
had ever been on Westminster Bridge,^ he answered 
that he did not know ! 

It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, or 
a temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which 
is laid ; nor can I quite prefigure what destination 
the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some 
few hints I have set down, to guide my future 
observations. He hath the power of calculation 
in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth 
figures, after the first boggle, rapidly; as in the 
tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first 
he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22 ; but by 

1 " William Minor " was evidently forgetful of the exqui- 
site sonnet, " Composed Upon Westminster Bridge." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 241 

a little use he could combine 8 with 25, and ^iZ 
again with 16, — which approacheth something in 
kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying 
in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I 
am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the 
future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic 
smile which bursteth out upon occasion, — as when 
he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside ; 
and indeed no other answer was given, or proper 
to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a ques- 
tion. In the contour of skull certainly I discern 
something paternal ; but whether in all respects 
the future man shall transcend his father's fame, 
Time, the trier of Geniuses, must decide. Be it 
pronounced peremptorily at present that Willy is 
a well-mannered child, and though no great student, 
hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. 
Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. 
Yours, and yours most sincerely, 

C. Lamb. 



LXVII. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

March 9, 1822. 
Dear C., — It gives me great satisfaction to hear 
that the pig turned out so well,^ — they are inter- 
esting creatures at a certain age ; what a pity such 
buds should blow out into the maturity of rank 

1 Some one had sent Coleridge a pig, and the gift was 
erroneously credited to Lamb. 

16 



242 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

bacon ! You had all some of the crackling — and 
brain sauce ; did you remember to rub it with 
butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before 
the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with 
no CEdipean avulsion? Was the crackling the 
color of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no 
cursed complement of boiled neck of mutton be- 
fore it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did 
you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the 
pig, or can form the remotest guess what part Owen 
could play in the business. I never knew him give 
anything away in my life. He would not begin 
with strangers. I suspect the pig, after all, was 
meant for me ; but at the unlucky juncture of time 
being absent, the present somehow went round to 
Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one 
of those things I could never think of sending away. 
Teals, widgeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, 
geese, — your tame villatic things, — Welsh mutton, 
collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your 
potted char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early 
grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my 
friends as to myself. They are but self-extended ; 
but pardon me if I stop somewhere. Where the 
fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack 
than the sensual rarity, there my friends (or any 
good man) may command me ; but pigs are pigs, 
and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, 
I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done 
to Nature, who bestowed such a boon upon me, if 
in a churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. 
One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt of remorse 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 243 

was when a child. My kind old aunt ^ had strained 
her pocket- strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum- 
cake upon me. In my way home through the 
Borough, I met a venerable old man, not a mendi- 
cant, but thereabouts, — a look -beggar, not a verbal 
petitionist ; and in the coxcombry of taught-charity, 
I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little 
in all the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when 
of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me, — 
the sum it was to her ; the pleasure she had a right 
to expect that I — not the old impostor — should 
take in eating her cake ; the cursed ingratitude by 
which, under the color of a Christian virtue, 1 had 
frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, 
and took it to heart so grievously that I think I 
never suffered the like ; and I was right. It was a 
piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson 
to me ever after. The cake has long been masti- 
cated, consigned to dunghill with the ashes of that 
unseasonable pauper. • 

But when Providence, who is better to us all than 
our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my tempta- 
tion and my fall, I shall endeavor to act towards 
it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. 

Yours (short of pig) to command in everything, 

C. L. 

1 Elia: "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago." 



244 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

LXVIIL 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

March 20, 1822. 

My dear Wordsworth, — A letter from you is 
very grateful ; I have not seen a Kendal postmark 
so long. We are pretty well, save colds and rheu- 
matics, and a certain deadness to everything, which 
I think I may date from poor John's loss, and an- 
other accident or two at the same time, that has 
made me almost bury m.yself at Dalston, where yet 
I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths over- 
set one and put one out long after the recent grief. 
Two or three have died within this last two twelve- 
months, and so many parts of me have been numbed. 
One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a cas- 
ual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in 
preference to every other : the person is gone whom 
it would have peculiarly ^ited. It won't do for 
another. Every departure destroys a class of sym- 
pathies. There 's Captain Burney gone ! What fun 
has whist now ? What matters it what you lead, if you 
can no longer fancy him looking over you ? ^ One 
never hears anything, but the image of the particular 
person occurs with whom alone almost you would 
care to share the intelligence, — thus one distributes 
oneself about; and now for so many parts of me 
I have lost the market. Common natures do not 

^ Martin Burney was the grimy-fisted whist-player to whom 
Lamb once observed, "Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands 
you would hold ! " 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 245 

suffice me. Good people, as they are called, won't 
serve ; I want individuals. I am made up of queer 
points, and I want so many answering needles. 
The going-away of friends does not make the re- 
mainder more precious. It takes so much from 
them, as there was a common link. A, B, and C 
make a party. A dies. B not only loses A, but 
all A's part in C. C loses A's part in B, and so 
the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchange- 
ables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I 
have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life ; 
but my practice is against it. I grow ominously 
tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I 
served the Phihstines, and my neck is not subdued 
to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is 
to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief, 
day after day, all the golden hours of the day be- 
tween ten and four, without ease or interposition. 
TcBdet me haruni qiioiidianarum formartun, these 
pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh for 
a few years between the grave and the desk ! they 
are the same, save that at the latter you are the 
outside machine. The foul enchanter [Nick?], 
" letters four do form his name," — Busirane^ is his 
name in hell, — that has curtailed you of some do- 
mestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, 
not in present infliction, but in the taking away the 
hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper to 
myself a pension on this side of absolute incapacita- 
tion and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry, — 
Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a green old 
^ The enchanter in "The Faerie Queene" 



246 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

age (oh, green thought !) to have retired to Ponder's 
End, — emblematic name, how beautiful ! — in 
the Ware Road, there to have made up my accounts 
with Heaven and the Company, toddling about be- 
tween it and Cheshunt, anon stretching, on some 
fine Izaak Walton morning, to Hoddesdon or Am- 
well, careless as a beggar ; but walking, walking ever, 
till I fairly walked myself off my legs, — dying walk- 
ing ! The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all 
day (but not singing), with my breast against this 
thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pul- 
monary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Pal- 
merston's report of the clerks in the War-office 
(Debates in this morning's *' Times "), by which it 
appears, in twenty years as many clerks have been 
coughed and catarrhed out • of it into their freer 
graves. Thank you for asking about the pictures. 
Milton hangs over my fire-side in Covent Garden 
(when I am there) ; the rest have been sold for an 
old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should 
have set them off! You have gratified me with 
liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio 
story, — the thing is become in verity a sad task, and 
I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of it 
I should be happy ; but our chief- reputed assistants 
have forsaken us. The Opium- Eater crossed us 
once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly 
left us darkling ; and, in short, I shall go on from 
dull to worse, because I cannot resist the book- 
sellers' importunity, — the old plea, you know, of 
authors ; but I beheve on my part sincere. Hartley 
I do not so often see, but I never see him in unwel- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 247 

come hour. I thoroughly love and honor him. I 
send you a frozen epistle ; but it is winter and dead 
time of the year with me. May Heaven keep 
something like spring and summer up with you, 
strengthen your eyes, and make mine a little lighter 
to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and 
again, before all are closed ! 

Yours, with every kind remembrance, 

C. L. 



LXIX. 

TO JOHN CLARE.i 

August 31, 1822. 
Dear Clare, — I thank you heartily for your 
present. I am an inveterate old Londoner, but 
while I am among your choice collections I seem to 
be native to them and free of the country. The 
quality of your observation has astonished me. 
What have most pleased me have been " Recollec- 
tions after a Ramble," and those " Grongar Hill " 
kind of pieces in eight- syllable lines, my favourite 
measure, such as " Cooper Hill " and " SoUtude." 
In some of your story-telUng Ballads the provincial 
phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too 
profuse with them. In poetry slang of every kind 
is to be avoided. There is a rustic Cockneyism, as 
little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arca- 
dia to Helpstone. The true rustic style I think is 

1 The Northamptonshire peasant poet. He had sent 
Lamb his "The Village Minstrel, and other Poems" 



248 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

to be found in Shenstone. Would his " School-mis- 
tress," the prettiest of poems, have been better if he 
had used quite the Goody's own language? Now 
and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling ; 
but when nothing is gained in expression, it is out of 
tenor. It may make folks smile and stare ; but the 
ungenial coaHtion of barbarous with refined phrases 
will prevent you in the end from being so generally 
tasted as you desire to be. Excuse my freedom, 
and take the same hberty with my puns. 

I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. 
They are of all sorts ; there is a Methodist hymn for 
Sundays, and a farce for Saturday night. Pray give 
them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little 
volume, of which I have a duplicate, that I may 
return in equal number to your welcome presents. 
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the 
" London " for August. 

Since I saw you I have been in France, and have 
eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity things you 
ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs. 
Clare pick oif the hind-quarters, boil them plain, 
with parsley and butter. The fore-quarters are not 
so good. She may let them hop off by them.selves. 

Yours sincerely, 

Chas. Lamb. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 249 



LXX. 

TO MR. BARRON FIELD. 

September 22, 1822. 

My dear F.,- — I scribble hastily at office. Frank 
wants my letter presently. I and sister are just re- 
turned from Paris ! ^ We have eaten frogs. It 
has been such a treat ! You know our monotonous 
general tenor. Frogs are the nicest little delicate 
things, — rabbity flavored. Imagine a Lilliputian 
rabbit ! They fricassee them ; but in my mind, 
dressed seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would 
have been the decision of Apicius. . . . Paris is a 
glorious, picturesque old city. London looks mean 
and new to it, as the town of Washington would, 
seen after //. But they have no St. Paul's or West- 
minster Abbey. The Seine, so much despised by 
Cockneys, is exactly the size to run through a mag- 
nificent street ; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty 
Edinburgh stone (oh, the glorious antiques !) houses 
on the other. The Thames disunites London and 
Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me. He 
has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of 
Shakspeare. He paid a broker about ^40 Eng- 
lish for it. It is painted on the one half of a pair of 
bellows, — a lovely picture, corresponding with the 
Folio head. The bellows has old carved wings 

1 The Lambs had visited Paris on the invitation of James 
Kenney, the dramatist, who had married a Frenchwoman, 
and was living at Versailles. 



250 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

round it, and round the visnomy is inscribed, as 
near as I remember, not divided into rhyme, — I 
found out the rhyme, — 

" Whom have we here 
Stuck on this bellows, 
But the Prince of good fellows, 
Willy Shakspere ? " 

At top, — 

" O base and coward luck, 
To be here stuck ! " 

POINS. 

At bottom, — 

" Nay ! rather a glorious lot is to him assign'd, 
Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind. " 

Pistol. 

This is all in old carved wooden letters. The 
countenance smiling, sweet, and intellectual beyond 
measure, even as he was immeasurable. It may be 
a forgery. They laugh at me, and tell me Ireland 
is in Paris, and has been putting oif a portrait of 
the Black Prince. How far old wood may be imi- 
tated I cannot say. Ireland was not found out by 
his parchments, but by his poetry. I am confident 
no painter on either side the Channel could have 
painted anything near like the face I saw. Again, 
would such a painter and forger have taken £,^0 
for a thing, if authentic, worth ;^4000 ? Talma is 
not in the secret, for he had not even found out the 
rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over 
with it, and my life to Southey's '' Thalaba," it will 
gain universal faith. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 251 

The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine 
the blank filled up with all kind things. 

Our joint, hearty remembrances to both of you. 

Yours as ever, 

C. Lamb. 



LXXI. 

TO WALTER WILSON. 

December 16, 1822. 

Dear Wilson, — Lightning I was going to call 
you. You must have thought me negligent in not 
answering your letter sooner. But I have a habit of 
never writing letters but at the office ; 't is so much 
time cribbed out of the Company ; and I am but 
just got out of the thick of a tea-sale, in which most 
of the entry of notes, deposits, etc., usually falls to 
my share. 

I have nothing of De Foe's but two or three nov- 
els and the " Plague History." ^ I can give you no 
information about him. As a slight general charac- 
ter of what I remember of them (for I have not 
looked into them latterly) , I would say that in the 
appearance oi truth, in all the incidents and conver- 
sations that occur in them, they exceed any works 
of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illu- 
sion: The author W-tY^x appears in these self-narra- 
tives (for so they ought to be called, or rather 
auto-biographies) , but the naj^i^ator chains us down 
to an implicit belief in everything he says. There 

1 Wilson was preparing a Life of De Foe, and had writ- 
ten to Lamb for guidance. 



252 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

is all the minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates 
are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are 
repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you 
cannot choose but believe them. It is like reading 
evidence given in a court of justice. So anxious 
the story-teller seems that the truth should be clear- 
ly comprehended that when he has told us a matter 
of fact or a motive, in a line or two farther down 
he repeats it with his favorite figure of speech, *' I 
say " so and so, though he had made it abundantly 
plain before. This is in imitation of the common 
people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in 
which they are addressed by a master or mistress 
who wishes to impress something upon their memo- 
ries, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact 
readers. Indeed, it is to such principally that he 
writes. His style is everywhere beautiful, but plain 
and homely. "Robinson Crusoe " is delightful to all 
ranks and classes ; but it is easy to see that it is writ- 
ten in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower 
conditions of readers, — hence it is an especial favor- 
ite with seafaring men, poor boys, servant-maids, etc. 
His novels are capital kitchen- reading, while they 
are worthy, from their deep interest, to find a shelf 
in the libraries of the wealthiest and the most 
learned. His passion for matter-of-fact 7iar7'ative 
sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of com- 
mon incidents, which might happen to any man, 
and have no interest but the intense appearance of 
truth in them, to recommend them. The whole 
latter half or two -thirds of "Colonel Jack" is of 
this description. The beginning of " Colonel Jack " 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 253 

is the most affecting natural pic<^ure of a young thief 
that was ever drawn. His losing the stolen money 
in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when 
he was in despair, and then being in equal distress 
at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several 
similar touches in the early history of the Colonel, 
evince a deep knowledge of human nature, and 
putting out of question the superior romantic inter- 
est of the latter, in my mind very much exceed 
"Crusoe." " Roxana " (first edition) is the next in 
interest, though he left out the best part of it in 
subsequent editions from a foolish hypercriticism of 
his friend Southerne. But " Moll Flanders," the 
*' Account of the Plague," etc., are all of one family, 
and have the same stamp of character. Believe 
me, with friendly recollections — Brother (as I used 
to call you), Yours, 

C. Lamb. 

LXXII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

December 2-^, 1822. 
Dear Sir, — I have been so distracted with busi- 
ness and one thing or other, I have not had a quiet 
quarter of an hour for epistolary purposes. Christ- 
mas, too, is come, which always puts a rattle into 
my morning skull. It is a visiting, unquiet, un- 
quakerish season. I get more and more in love 
with solitude, and proportionately hampered with 
company. I hope you have some holidays at this 
period. I have one day, — Christmas Day; alas! 



254 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

too few to commemorate the season. All work and 
no play dulls me. Company is not play, but many 
times hard work. To play, is for a man to do what 
he pleases, or to do nothing, — to go about soothing 
his particular fancies. I have lived to a time of life 
to have outlived the good hours, the nine-o'clock 
suppers, with a bright hour or two to clear up in 
afterwards. Now you cannot get tea before that 
hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered perhaps, 
till half- past twelve brings up the tray ; and what 
you steal of convivial enjoyment after, is heavily 
paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow's head. 

I am pleased with your liking " John Woodvil," 
and amused with your knowledge of our drama 
being confined to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie. 
What a world of fine territory between Land's End 
and Johnny Groat's have you missed traversing 1 I 
could almost envy you to have so much to read. I 
feel as if I had read all the books I want to read. 
Oh, to forget Fielding, Steele, etc., and read 'em 
new ! 

Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick 
up cheap Fox's Journal? There are no Quaker 
circulating libraries ? Elwood, too, I must have. I 
rather grudge that Southey has taken up the history 
of your people ; I am afraid he will put in some 
levity. I am afraid I am not quite exempt from 
that fault in certain magazine articles, where I have 
introduced mention of them. Were they to do 
again, I would reform them. Why should not you 
write a poetical account of your old worthies, de- 
ducing them from Fox to Woolman? But I remem- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 255 

ber you did talk of something of that kind, as a 
counterpart to the " Ecclesiastical Sketches." But 
would not a poem be more consecutive than a 
string of sonnets? You have no martyrs quite to the 
fire, I think, among you, but plenty of heroic con- 
fessors, spirit-martyrs, lamb-Hons. Think of it ; it 
would be better than a series of sonnets on " Emi- 
nent Bankers." I like a hit at our way of hfe, 
though it does well for me, — better than anything 
short of all one's time to one's self; for which alone 
I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good, 
and pictures are good, and money to buy them 
therefore good ; but to buy time, — in other words, 

life ! 

The " compliments of the time " to you, should 
end my letter ; to a Friend, I suppose, I must say 
the "sincerity of the season:" I hope they both 
mean the same. With excuses for this hastily 
penned note, beheve me, with great respect, 

C. Lamb. 



LXXIII. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

Mary perfectly approves of the appropriation of 
the feathers, and wishes them peacock's for your 

fair niece's sake. 

Christmas, 1822. 

Dear Miss Wordsworth, — I had just written the 
above endearing words when Monkhouse tapped me 
on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose pie, 
which I was not bird of that sort enough to decline. 



256 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Mrs. Monkhouse, I am most happy to say, is better. 
Mary has been tormented with a rheumatism, which 
is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities 
of the season. I wonder how my misused carcase 
holds it out. I have played the experimental phi- 
losopher on it, that 's certain. Willy shall be wel- 
come to a mince-pie and a bout at commerce 
whenever he comes. He was in our eye. I am 
glad you liked my new year's speculations ; every- 
body likes them, except the author of the " Pleas- 
ures of Hope." Disappointment attend him ! How 
I like to be liked, and ivhat I do to be liked ! They 
flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all the 
minor reviews ; the Quarterlies hold aloof. But 
they must come into it in time, or their leaves be 
waste paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. 
Two special things are worth seeing at Cambridge, — 
a portrait of Cromwell at Sidney, and a better of 
Dr. Harvey (who found out that blood was red) at 
Dr. Davy's ; you should see them. Coleridge is 
pretty well ; I have not seen him, but hear often 
of him from Allsop, who sends me hares and pheas- 
ants twice a week ; I can hardly take so fast as he 
gives. I have almost forgotten butcher's meat as 
plebeian. Are you not glad the cold is gone? I 
find winters not so agreeable as they used to be 
"when winter bleak had charms for me." I cannot 
conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes. 
Let them keep to twelfth-cakes ! 

Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in 
town. You do not know the Watfords in Trumping- 
ton Street. They are capital people. Ask anybody 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 257 

you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, 
and I '11 hold you a wager they '11 say Mrs. Smith ; 
she broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, — 
one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a 
litigation between the Societies as to repairing it. 
In warm weather, she retires into an ice-cellar (Hte- 
rally !), and dates the returns of the years from a hot 
Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in a 
room with opposite doors and windows, to let in 
a thorough draught, which gives her slenderer 
friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the mar- 
ket every morning at ten cheapening fowls, which 
I observe the Cambridge poulterers are not suffi- 
ciently careful to stump. 

Having now answered most of the points con- 
tained in your letter, let me end with assuring you 
of our very best kindness, and excuse Mary for not 
handhng the pen on this occasion, especially as it 
has fallen into so much better hands ! Will Dr. W. 
accept of my respects at the end of a fooUsh letter ? 

e. L. 



LXXIV. 

TO MR. AND MRS. BRUTON.i 

January 6, 1823. 
The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a 
dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who 
should have the ears ; but in spite of his obstinacy 

1 Hertfordshire connections of the Lambs. 
17 



258 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

(deaf as these little creatures are to advice), I con- 
trived to get at one of them. 

It came in boots, too, which I took as a favor. 
Generally these petty-toes, pretty toes ! are missing ; 
but I suppose he wore them to look taller. 

He must have been the least of his race. His 
little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. 
I take him to have been a Chinese and a female. 

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never 
have farrowed two such prodigious volumes, seeing 
how much good can be contained in — how small a 
compass ! 

He crackled delicately. 

I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being 
determined which to address it to ; so farmer and 
farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May 
your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and 
your chickens plump, and your envious neighbors 
lean, and your laborers busy, and you as idle and 
as happy as the day is long ! 

VIVE l'agriculture ! 

How do you make your pigs so little ? 
They are vastly engaging at the age : 

I was so myself. 
Now I am a disagreeable old hog, 
A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half ; 
My faculties (thank God !) are not much impaired. 

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect, and 
can read the Lord's Prayer in common type, by the 
help of a candle, without making many mistakes. 

Many happy returns, not of the pig, but of the 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 259 

New Year, to both. Mary, for her share of the pig 
and the memoirs, desires to send the same. 
Yours truly, 



C. Lamb. 



LXXV. 



TO BERNARD BARTON.i 

Jafjuary 9, 1823. 

Throw yourself on the world without any rational 
plan of support beyond what the chance employ of 
booksellers would afford you ! 

Throw yourself, rather, my dear sir, from the 
steep Tarpeian rock slap-dash headlong upon iron 
spikes. If you had but five consolatory minutes 
between the desk and the bed, make much of them, 
and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to 
the booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars when 
they have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto 
you have been at arm's length from them. Come 
not within their grasp. I have known many authors 
want for bread, some repining, others envying the 
blessed security of a counting-house,, all agreeing 
they had rather have been tailors, weavers, — what 
not, — rather than the things they were. I have 
known some starved, some to go mad, one dear 
friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know 
not what a rapacious, dishonest set these book- 

1 The Quaker poet. Mr. Barton was a clerk in the bank 
of the Messrs. Alexander, of Woodbridge, in Suffolk. En- 
couraged by his literary success, he thought of throwing up 
his clerkship and trusting to his pen for a livelihood, — a 
design from which he was happily diverted by his friends. 



26o LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

sellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case 
almost) has made a fortune by book-drudgery, what 
he has found them. Oh, you know not — may you 
never know ! — the miseries of subsisting by author- 
ship. 'T is a pretty appendage to a situation like 
yours or mine, but a slavery, worse than all slavery, 
to be a bookseller's dependant, to drudge your 
brains for pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to 
change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers 
for ungracious task-work. Those fellows hate us. 
The reason I take to be that, contrary to other 
trades, in which the master gets all the credit (a 
jeweller or silversmith for instance), and the jour- 
neyman, who really does the fine work, is in the 
background, in our work the world gives all the 
credit to us, whom they consider as their journeymen, 
and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and 
oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, 
to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches ! 
I contend that a bookseller has a relative hofiesty 
towards authors, not like his honesty to the rest of 
the world. Baldwin, who first engaged me as Elia, 
has not paid me up yet (nor any of us without re- 
peated mortifying appeals). Yet how the knave 
fawned when I was of service to him ! Yet I daresay 
the fellow is punctual in settling his railk-score, etc. 
Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. 
Trust not to the public ; you may hang, starve, 
drown yourself, for anything that worthy personage 
cares. I bless every star that Providence, not see- 
ing good to make me independent, has seen it next 
good to settle me upon the stable foundation of 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



261 



Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the banking- 
office ; what ! is there not from six to e even p. m 
six days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? 
Fie ' what a superfluity of man's time, if you could 
think so, -enough for relaxation, mirth converse, 
poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh, the cor- 
roding, torturing, tormenting thoughts that disturb 
the brain of the unlucky wight who must draw upon 
it for daily sustenance ! Henceforth I retract a 1 
my foul complaints of mercantile employment; look 
upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half m 
earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that 
makes me live ! A little grumbling is a wholesome 
medicine for the spleen, but in my inner heart do 1 
approve and embrace this our close, but unharass- 
ing, way of life. I am quite serious. If you can 
send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will 
return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, 
without blot or dog's-ear. You will much obhge 

me by this kindness. 

Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 

LXXVI. 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

April 25, 1823. 
Dear Miss H., - Mary has such an invincible re- 
luctance to any epistolary exertion that I am spar- 
ing her a mortification by taking the pen from her. 
The plain truth is, she writes such a mean, detest- 
able hand that she is ashamed of the formation of 



262 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

her letters. There is an essential poverty and ab- 
jectness in the frame of them. They look like beg- 
ging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most 
substantial word in the second draught (for she 
never ventures an epistle without a foul copy first), 
which is obliged to be interlined, — which spoils the 
neatest epistle, you know. Her figures, i, 2, 3, 4, 
etc., where she has occasion to express numerals, as 
in the date (25th April, 1823), are not figures, but 
figurantes ; and the combined posse go staggering 
up and down shameless, as drunkards in the day- 
time. It is no better when she rules her paper. 
Her lines " are not less erring " than her words ; 
a sort of unnatural parallel lines, that are perpetu- 
ally threatening to meet, — which, you know, is quite 
contrary to Euclid. Her very blots are not bold, 
like this \he7'e a large blot is inserted^ but poor 
smears, half left in and half scratched out, with 
another smear left in their place. I like a clear 
letter; a bold, free hand and a fearless flourish. 
Then she has always to go through them (a second 
operation) to dot her z's and cross her /s. I don't 
think she could make a corkscrew if she tried, — 
which has such a fine effect at the end or middle 
of an epistle, and fills up. 

There is a corkscrew ! One of the best I ever 
drew.-^ By the way, what incomparable whiskey 
that was of Monkhouse's ! But if I am to write a 
letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing like 
a fencer at a fair. 

1 Lamb was fond of this flourish, and it is frequently found 
in his letters. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 263 

April 25, 1823. 

Dear Miss H., — It gives me great pleasure [the 
letter now begins] to hear that you got down so 
smoothly, and that Mrs. Monkhouse's spirits are so 
good and enterprising.^ It shows, whatever her pos- 
ture may be, that her mind at least is not supine. I 
hope the excursion will enable the former to keep 
pace with its outstripping neighbor. Pray present 
our kindest wishes to her and all (that sentence 
should properly have come into the postscript ; but 
we airy, mercurial spirits, there is no keeping us in). 
" Time " (as was said of one of us) " toils after 
us in vain." I am afraid our co-visit with Cole- 
ridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the 
end or middle of June, and then you will be frog- 
hopping at Boulogne. And besides, I think the 
Gilmans would scarce trust him with us; I have 
a malicious knack at cutting of apron-strings. The 
saints' days you speak of have long since fled to 
heaven with Astraea, and the cold piety of the age 
lacks fervor to recall them ; only Peter left his key, 
— the iron one of the two that " shuts amain," — 
and that is the reason I am locked up. Meanwhile, 
of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and 
Mary corrects me when I call 'em cowslips. God 
bless you all, and pray remember me euphoniously 
to Mr. Gruvellegan. That Lee Priory must be a 
dainty bower. Is it built of flints? and does it 
stand at Kingsgate? 

1 Miss Hutchinson's invalid relative. 



264 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



LXXVII. 



TO BERNARD Bj^RTON. 



September 2, 1823. 

Dear B. B., — What will you not say to my not 
writing ? You cannot say I do not write now. Hes- 
sey has not used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen 
it. Pray send me a copy. Neither have I heard any 
more of your friend's MS., which I will reclaim 
whenever you please. When you come London- 
ward, you will find me no longer in Covent Garden ; 
I have a cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington, — 
a cottage, for it is detached ; a white house, with 
six good rooms. The New River (rather elderly 
by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can 
be so termed) close to the foot of the house ; and 
behind is a spacious garden with vines (I assure 
you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, 
cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. 
You enter without passage into a cheerful dining- 
room, all studded over and rough with old books ; 
and above is a lightsome drawing-room, three win- 
dows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great lord, 
never having had a house before. 

The " London," I fear, falls off. I linger among 
its creaking rafters, like the last rat ; it will topple 
down if they don't get some buttresses. They 
have pulled down three, — Hazlitt, Procter, and 
their best stay, kind, light-hearted Wainewright, their 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 265 

Janus.^ The best is, neither of our fortunes is con- 
cerned in it. 

I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, 
and that gave a filHp to my laziness, which has been 
intolerable ; but I am so taken up with pruning and 
■gardening, — quite a new sort of occupation to me. 
I have gathered my jargonels ; but my Windsor 
pears are backward. The former were of exquisite 
raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and 
contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can 
now understand in what sense they speak of father 
Adam. I recognize the paternity while I watch my 
tuhps. I almost fell with him, for the first day I 
turned a drunken gardener (as he let in the ser- 
pent) into my Eden ; and he laid about him, lop- 
ping off some choice boughs, etc., which hung over 
from a neighbor's garden, and in his blind zeal laid 
waste a shade which had sheltered their window 
from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentlewoman 
(fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be 
reconciled by all my fine words. There was no 
buttering her parsnips. She talked of the law. 
What a lapse to commit on the first day of my 
happy " garden state " ! 

I hope you transmitted the Fox- Journal to its 
owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Gary, the Dante 
man, dines with me to-day. He is a mode of a 
country parson, lean (as a curate ought to be), 
modest, sensible, no obtruder of church dogmas, 

1 Wainewright, the notorious poisoner, who, under the 
name of "Janus Weathercock," contributed various frothy 
papers on art and literature to the " London Magazine." 



266 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

quite a different man from Southey. You would 
like him. Pray accept this for a letter, and believe 
me, with sincere regards, yours, 

C. L. 



LXXVIII. 

TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

November, 1823. 
Dear Mrs. H., — Sitting down to write a let- 
ter is such a painful operation to Mary that you 
must accept me as her proxy. You have seen our 
house. What I now tell you is literally true. Yes- 
terday week, George Dyer called upon us, at one 
o'clock {bright noonday^, on his way to dine with 
Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary 
about half an hour, and took leave. The maid saw 
him go out from her kitchen window, but suddenly 
losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. 
G. D., instead of keeping the slip that leads to the 
gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad, open 
day, marched into the New River.^ He had not 
his spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who 
helped him out, they can hardly tell ; but between 
'em they got him out, drenched thro' and thro'. 
A mob collected by that time, and accompanied 
him in. " Send for the doctor ! " they said ; and 
a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched 
from the public-house at the end, where it seem 
he lurks for the sake of picking up water-practice, 

1 See Elia-essay, "Amicus Redivivus." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 267 

having formerly had a medal from the Humane 
Society for some rescue. By his advice the patient 
was put between blankets ; and when I came 
home at four to dinner, I found G. D. a-bed, and 
raving, light-headed with the brandy- and- water 
which the doctor had administered. He sang, 
laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian 
angels, would get up and go home ; but we kept 
him there by force ; and by next morning he 
departed sobered, and seems to have received no 
injury.^ All my friends are open-mouthed about 
having paling before the river ; but I cannot see 
that because a . . . lunatic chooses to walk into 
a river, with his eyes open, at mid-day, I am any 
the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home 
at midnight. 

1 In the "Athenaeum" for 1835 Procter says: "I hap- 
pened to call at Lamb's house about ten mhiutes after this 
accident ; I saw before me a train of water running from 
the door to the river. Lamb had gone for a surgeon ; the 
maid was running about distraught, with dry clothes on one 
arm, and the dripping habiliments of the involuntary bather 
in the other. Miss Lamb, agitated, and whimpering forth 
' Poor Mr. Dyer! ' in the most forlorn voice, stood plunging 
her hands into the wet pockets of his trousers, to fish up the 
wet coin. Dyer himself, an amiable little old man, who took 
water zVzternally and eschewed strong liquors, lay on his 
host's bed, hidden by blankets ; his head, on which was his 
short gray hair, alone peered out ; and this, having been 
rubbed dry by a resolute hand, — by the maid's, I believe, 
who assisted at the rescue, — looked as if bristling with a 
thousand needles. Lamb, moreover, in his anxiety, had 
administered a formidable dose of cognac and water to the 
sufferer, and he (used only to the simple element) babbled 
without cessation." 



268 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



LXXIX. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

yanuary 9, 1824. 
Dear B. B., — Do you know what it is to suc- 
cumb under an insurmountable day- mare, — "a 
whoreson lethargy," Falstaff calls it, — an indispo- 
sition to do anything or to be anything ; a total 
deadness and distaste j a suspension of vitality ; 
an indifference to locality; a numb, soporifical 
good-for-nothingness ; an ossification all over ; an 
oyster-like insensibility to the passing events ; a 
mind-stupor ; a brawny defiance to the needles 
of a thrusting-in conscience? Did you ever have 
a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to sub- 
mit to water-gruel processes? This has been for 
many weeks my lot and my excuse. JMy fingers 
drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking 
it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end 
of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; 
nothing is of more importance than another. I am 
flatter than a denial or a pancake ; emptier than 
Judge Parke's wig when the head is in it; duller 
than a country stage when the actors are off it, — 
a cipher, an o ! I acknowledge life at all only by 
an occasional convulsional cough and a permanent 
phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the 
world ; life is weary of me. My day is gone into 
twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense 
of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 269 

muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation ; 
I can't distinguish veal from mutton ; nothing inter- 
ests me. 'T is twelve o'clock, and Thurtell ^ is just 
now coming out upon the new drop, Jack Ketch 
alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last 
office of mortality ; yet cannot I elicit a groan or 
a moral reflection. If you told me the world will 
be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, " Will 
it? " I have not volition enough left to dot my /'s, 
much less to comb my eyebrows ; my eyes are set 
in my head ; my brains are gone out to see a poor 
relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when 
they 'd come back again ; my skull is a Grub Street 
attic to let, — not so much as a joint-stool left 
in it ; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chick- 
ens run about a little when their heads are off. Oh 
for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache, — an 
earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs ; 
pain is life, — the sharper the more evidence of 
life ; but this apathy, this death ! Did you ever 
have an obstinate cold, — a six or seven weeks' 
unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, 
conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I can 
to cure it. I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, 
and snuff in unsparing quantities ; but they all only 
seem to make me worse, instead of better. I sleep 
in a damp room, but it does me no good ; I come 
home late o' nights, but do not find any visible 
amendment ! Who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death ? 

It is just fifteen minutes after twelve. Thurtell is 
1 Hanged that day for the murder of Weare. 



270 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at 
Scorpion, perhaps. Ketch is bargaining for his cast 
coat and waistcoat ; and the Jew demurs at first at 
three half-crowns, but on consideration that he may 
get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally 

closes. 

C. L. 

LXXX. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

January 23, 1824. 

My dear Sir, — That peevish letter of mine,^ 
which was meant to convey an apology for my 
incapacity to write, seems to have been taken by 
you in too serious a light, — it was only my way of 
telling you I had a severe cold. The fact is, I have 
been insuperably dull and lethargic for many weeks, 
and cannot rise to the vigor of a letter, much less 
an essay. The '' London " must do without me for 
a time, for I have lost all interest about it; and 
whether I shall recover it again I know not. I will 
bridle my pen another time, and not tease and 
puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begin to feel 
a little more alive with the spring. 

Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a great 
trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not to have 
noticed your tribute to Woolman, whom we love so 
much ; it is done in your good manner. Your 
friend Tayler called upon me some time since, and 
seems a very amiable man. His last story is pain- 

1 Letter LXXIX. 



LETTERS OE CHARLES LAMB. 271 

fully fine. His book I " like ; " it is only too stuffed 
with Scripture, too parsonish. The best thing in it 
is the boy's own story. When I say it is too full of 
Scripture, I mean it is too full of direct quotations ; 
no book can have too much of silent Scripture in it. 
But the natural power of a story is diminished when 
the uppermost purpose in the writer seems to be to re- 
commend something else, — namely, Religion. You 
know what Horace says of the Deus inter sit ? I am 
not able to explain myself, — you must do it for me. 
My sister's part in the " Leicester School " (about 
two thirds) was purely her own ; as it was (to the 
same quantity) in the " Shakspeare Tales " which 
bear my name. I wrote only the " Witch Aunt," 
the '' First Going to Church," and the final story 
about " A little Indian girl " in a ship. Your account 
of my black-balling amused me. / think, as Quakers, 
they did right. There are some things hard to be 
understood. The more I think, the more I am 
vexed at having puzzled you with that letter ; but I 
have been so out of letter-writing of late years that 
it is a sore effort to sit down to it ; and I felt in 
your debt, and sat down waywardly to pay you in 
bad money. Never mind my dulness ; I am used 
to long intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to 
me ; then again comes the refreshing shower, — 

" I have been merry twice and once ere now." 

You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late 
letter, which I beUeve I did not advert to. I shall 
be happy to show him my Milton (it is all the show 
things I have) at any time he will take the trouble 



272 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

of a jaunt to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. 
Tayler there some day. Pray say so to both. Cole- 
ridge's book is in good part printed, but sticks a 
little for more copy. It bears an unsalable title, — 
" Extracts from Bishop Leighton ; " but I am con- 
fident there will be plenty of good notes in it, — 
more of Bishop Coleridge than Leighton in it, I 
hope ; for what is Leighton ? Do you trouble your- 
self about libel cases? The decision against Hunt 
for the " Vision of Judgment " made me sick. What 
is to become of the good old talk about our good 
old king, — his personal virtues saving us from a 
revolution, etc.? Why, none that think can ut- 
ter it now. It must stink. And the "Vision " is as 
to himward such a tolerant, good-humored thing ! 
What a wretched thing a Lord Chief Justice is, 
always was, and will be ! 

Keep your good spirits up, dear B. B., mine will 
return ; they are at present in abeyance, but I am 
rather lethargic than miserable. I don't know but 
a good horsewhip would be more beneficial to me 
than physic. My head, without aching, will teach 
yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the con- 
clusion. I will send a better letter when I am a 
better man. Let me thank you for your kind con- 
cern for me (which I trust will have reason soon 
to be dissipated), and assure you that it gives me 
pleasure to hear from you. 

Yours truly, 

C.L. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 273 

LXXXI. 

TO BERNARD BARTON 

April, 1824. 

Dear B. B., — I am sure I cannot fill a letter, 
though I should disfurnish my skull to fill it ; but you 
expect something, and shall have a notelet. Is Sun- 
day, not divinely speaking, but humanly and holiday- 
sically, a blessing? Without its institution, would 
our rugged taskmasters have given us a leisure day so 
often, think you, as once in a month? or, if it had 
not been instituted, might they not have given us 
every sixth day ? Solve me this problem. If we are 
to go three times a-day to church, why has Sunday 
slipped into the notion of a ^^//day ? A HoLY-day, I 
grant it. The Puritans, I have read in Southey's 
book, knew the distinction. They made people ob- 
serve Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery- 
maid walk out in the fields with children for recreation 
on that day. But then they gave the people a holi- 
day from all sorts of work every second Tuesday. 
This was giving to the two Caesars that which was 
his respective. Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous 
legislators ! Would Wilberforce give us our Tues- 
days ? No ; he would turn the six days into 
sevenths, — 

" And those three smiling seasons of the year 
Into a Russian winter." 

Old Play. 

I am sitting opposite a person who is making 
strange distortions with the gout, which is not un- 



2 74 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pleasant, — to me, at least. What is the reason we 
do not sympathize with pain, short of some terrible 
surgical operation? HazHtt, who boldly says all he 
feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick 
people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognize 
his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a con- 
sideration, too simply a consideration of self-atten- 
tion. We pity poverty, loss of friends, etc., — more 
complex things, in which the sufferer's feelings are 
associated with others. This is a rough thought 
suggested by the presence of gout ; I want head to 
extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your 
letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, 
when I write at all^ is perversely to travel out of 
the record, so that my letters are anything but 
answers. So you still want a motto? You must 
not take my ironical one, because your book, I take 
it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used 
it for his lucubrations. What do you think of (for 
a title) Religio Tremuli? or Tremebundi? There 
is Religio Medici and Laici. But perhaps the 
volume is not quite Quakerish enough, or exclusively 
so, for it. Your own " Vigils " is perhaps the best. 
While I have space, let me congratulate with you 
the return of spring, — what a summery spring too ! 
All those qualms about the dog and cray-fish^ melt 
before it. I am going to be happy and vain again. 
A hasty farewell, 

C. Lamb. 

1 Lamb had confessed, in a previous letter to Barton, to 
having once wantonly set a dog upon a cray-fish. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 275 

LXXXII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

May 15, 1824. 
Dear B. B., — I am oppressed with business all 
day, and company all night. But I will snatch a 
quarter of an hour. Your recent acquisitions of the 
picture and the letter are greatly to be congratulated. 
I too have a picture of my father and the copy of 
his first love-verses ; but they have been mine long. 
Blake is a real name, I assure you, and a most ex- 
traordinary man, if he is still living. He is the 
Robert [William] Blake whose wild designs accom- 
pany a splendid folio edition of the "Night Thoughts," 
which you may have seen, in one of which he pic- 
tures the parting of soul and body by a solid mass of 
human form floating off, God knows how, from a 
lumpish mass (fac-simile to itself) left behind on 
the dying bed. He paints in water-colors marvellous 
strange pictures, visions of his brain, which he asserts 
that he has seen ; they have great merit. He has 
seen the old Welsh bards on Snowdon, — he has seen 
the beautifullest, the strongest, and the ugliest man, 
left alone from the massacre of the Britons by the 
Romans, and has painted them from memory (I 
have seen his paintings), and asserts them to be as 
good as the figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not 
better, as they had precisely the same retro -visions 
and prophetic visions with themself [himself] . The 
painters in oil (which he will have it that neither of 
them practised) he affirms to have been the ruin of 



276 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

art, and affirms that all the while he was engaged in 

his Welsh paintings, Titian was disturbing him, — 

Titian the 111 Genius of Oil Painting. His pictures — 

one in particular, the Canterbury Pilgrims, far above 

Stothard — have great merit, but hard, dry, yet with 

grace. He has written a Catalogue of them, with a 

most spirited criticism on Chaucer, but mystical and 

full of vision. His poems have been sold hitherto 

only in manuscript. I never read them ; but a 

friend at my desire procured the "Sweep Song." 

There is one to a tiger, which I have heard recited, 

beginning, — 

" Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, 
Thro' the deserts of the night," 

which is glorious, but, alas ! I have not the book ; 
for the man is flown, whither I know not, — to 
Hades or a madhouse. But I must look on him 
as one of the most extraordinary persons of the age. 
Montgomery's book^ I have not much hope from, 
and the society with the affected name ^ has been 
laboring at it for these twenty years, and made few 
converts. I think it was injudicious to mix stories, 
avowedly colored by fiction, with the sad, true state- 
ments from the parliamentary records, etc. But I 
wish the little negroes all the good that can come 
from it. I battered my brains (not buttered them, 
— but it is a bad a) for a few verses for them, but 

1 " The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and Climbing-Boy's 
Album," — a book, by James Montgomery, setting forth the 
wrongs of the little chimney-sweepers, for whose relief a 
society had been started. 

2 The Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Infant 
Chimney-Sweepers. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 277 

I could make nothing of it. You have been luckier. 
But Blake's are the flower of the set, you will, I am 
sure, agree ; though some of Montgomery's at the 
end are pretty, but the Dream awkwardly para- 
phrased from B. 

With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private 
Theatrical, I have written nothing new for near six 
months. It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. 
I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have 
none. 'T is barren all and dearth. No matter; 
life is something without scribbUng. I have got 
rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this 
rain- damned May. 

So we have lost another poet.^ I never much 
relished his Lordship's mind, and shall be sorry if 
the Greeks have cause to miss him. He was to me 
offensive, and I never can make out his real power, 
which his admirers talk of. Why, a line of Words- 
worth's is a lever to hft the immortal spirit ; Byron 
can only move the spleen. He was at best a satir- 
ist. In any other way, he was mean enough. I 
daresay I do him injustice ; but I cannot love him, 
nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like 
the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis 
advised the Radicals, '' if they don't like their coun- 
try, damn 'em, let 'em leave it," they possessing no 
rood of ground in England, and he ten thousand 
acres. Byron was better than many Curtises. 

Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from 
one who owes you so much in that kind. 

Yours ever truly, C. L. 

1 Byron had died on April 19. 



278 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



LXXXIII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 



August, 1824. 



I CAN no more understand Shelley than you can ; 
his poetry is " thin sown with profit or delight." 
Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceived 
and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that ad- 
dressed to one who hated him, but who could not 
persuade him to hate hi77i again. His coyness to 
the other's passion — for hate demands a return as 
much as love, and starves without it — is most arch 
and pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his 
theories and nostrums, they are oracular enough, but 
I either comprehend 'em not, or there is " miching 
malice " and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, 
ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well 
of 'em : " Many are the wiser and better for read- 
ing Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser or better 
for reading Shelley." I wonder you will sow your 
correspondence on so barren a ground as I am, that 
make such poor returns. But my head aches at the 
bare thought of letter-writing. I wish all the ink in 
the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shiv- 
ering up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. 
The same indisposition to write it is has stopped my 
"Elias ; " but you will see a futile effort in the next 
number,^ "wrung from me with slow pain." The 

1 The essay " Blakesmoor in Hertfordshire," in the "Lon- 
don Magazine " for September, 1824. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 279 

fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. I am 
dreadfully indolent. To have to do anything — to 
order me a new coat, for instance, though my old 
buttons are shelled like beans — is an effort. My 
pen stammers like my tongue. What cool craniums 
those old inditers of folios must have had, what a 
mortified pulse ! Well, once more I throw my- 
self on your mercy. Wishing peace in thy new 
dwelling, 

C. Lamb. 

LXXXIV. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

December i, 1824. 

Taylor and Hessey, finding their magazine ^ goes 
off very heavily at 2s. 6d., are prudently going to 
raise their price another shilling; and having al- 
ready more authors than they want, intend to in- 
crease the number of them. If they set up against 
the " New Monthly," they must change their present 
hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a review 
to a half-dead magazine will do their business. It 
is like George Dyer multiplying his volumes to make 
'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off, 
he pubHshes two ; two stick, he tries three ; three 
hang fire, he is confident that four will have a better 
chance. 

1 Taylor and Hessey succeeded John Scott as editors of 
the " London Magazine " (of which they were also publishers), 
and it was to this periodical that most of Lamb's Elia 
Essays were contributed. 



28o LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the gloomy 
catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder 
vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy^ 
makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting 
eyes around on such of my friends as, by a parity 
of situation, are exposed to a similarity of tempta- 
tion. My very style seems to myself to become 
more impressive than usual, with the change of 
theme. Who, that standeth, knoweth but he may 
yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to 
believe, have never deviated into others' property ; 
you think it impossible that you could ever commit 
so heinous an offence. But so thought Fauntleroy 
once ; so have thought many besides him, who at 
last have expiated as he hath done. You are as yet 
upright ; but you are a banker, — at least, the next 
thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but 
cash must pass through your hands, sometimes to a 
great amount. If in an unguarded hour — But I will 
hope better. Consider the scandal it will bring upon 
those of your persuasion. Thousands would go to 
see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to 
the fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. Think 
of the effect it would have on the sale of your poems 
alone, not to mention higher considerations ! I trem- 
ble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many 
poor victims of the law, at one time of their life, 
made as sure of never being hanged as I, in my pre- 
sumption, am too ready to do myself. What are we 
better than they? Do we come into the world with 

1 The forger, hanged Nov. 30, 1824. This was the last 
execution for this offence. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 281 

different necks? Is there any distinctive mark un- 
der our left ears? Are we unstrangulable, I ask 
you ? Think of these things. I am shocked some- 
times at the shape of my own fingers, not for their 
resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something), 
but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the pur- 
poses of picking fingering, etc. No one that is so 
framed, I maintain it, but should tremble. 

C. L. 

LXXXV. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

March 23, 1825. 
Dear B. B., — I have had no impulse to write, or 
attend to any single object but myself for weeks 
past, — my single self, I by myself, I. I am sick 
of hope (deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation 
that is to turn up my fortune ; but round it rolls, 
and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of free- 
dom, of becoming a gentleman at large ; but I am 
put off from day to day. I have offered my resigna- 
tion, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight 
weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense. Guess 
what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not con- 
scious of the existence of friends present or absent. 
The East India Directors alone can be that thing to 
me or not. I have- just learned that nothing will 
be decided this week. Why the next? Why any 
week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fin- 
gers ; I rub 'em against paper, and write to you, 
rather than not allay this scorbuta. 



282 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no 
doubts of Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his disre- 
spect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a mis- 
sionary subject, first part) to Coleridge, the most 
beautiful, cordial, and sincere. He there acknowl- 
edges his obligation to S. T. C. for his knowledge of 
Gospel truths, the nature of a Christian Church, 
etc., — to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at 
whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather than to 
that of all the men living. This from him, the great 
dandled and petted sectarian, to a religious char- 
acter so equivocal in the world's eye as that of 
S. T. C, so foreign to the Kirk's estimate, — can 
this man be a quack ? The language is as affecting 
as the spirit of the dedication. Some friend told 
him, " This dedication will do you no good," — /. <?., 
not in the world's repute, or with your own people. 
" That is a reason for doing it," quoth Ir\Wng. 

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, 
out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil of 
Pythagoras. You must like him. 

Yours, in tremors of painful hope, 

C. Lamb. 



LXXXVI. 

TO WORDSWORTH 

April d, 1825. 

Dear Wordsworth, — I have been several times 
meditating a letter to you concerning the good 
thing which has befallen me ; but the thought of 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 283 

poor Monkhouse^ came across me. He was one 
that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating 
me. He and you were to have been the first par- 
ticipators ; for indeed it has been ten weeks since 
the first motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty- 
three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at 
eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a 
freed man, with ;^44i a year for the remainder of 
my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived 
his annuity and starved at ninety: ^441; /. <?., 
;^45o, with a deduction of ^9 for a provision se- 
cured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension 
guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, etc. 

I came home forever on Tuesday in last week. 
The incomprehensibleness of my condition over- 
whelmed me ; it was like passing from life into 
eternity. Every year to be as long as three, /. e., 
to have three times as much real time — time that 
is my own — in it ! I wandered about thinking I 
was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumul- 
tuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand 
the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual 
month, were always uneasy joys, — their conscious 
fugitiveness ; the craving after making the most 
of them. Now, when all is holiday, there are no 
holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, with- 
out a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily 
steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me 
to be my own master as it has been irksome to 
have had a master. Mary wakes every morning 

^ Wordsworth's cousin, who was ill of consumption in 
Devonshire. He died the following year. 



284 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

with an obscure feeling that some good has happened 
to us. 

Leigh Hunt and Montgomery, after their release- 
ments, describe the shock of their emancipation 
much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I 
eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anx- 
ious schemes for going hither and thither, but take 
things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned 
twenty miles ; to-day I write a few letters. Pleas- 
uring was for fugitive play-days ; mine are fugitive 
only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom 
and life co-existent ! 

At the foot of such a call upon you for gratula- 
tion, I am ashamed to advert to that melancholy 
event. Monkhouse was a character I learned to 
love slowly ; but it grew upon me yearly, monthly, 
daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant 
parties ! His noble, friendly face was always coming 
before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, 
and for the time has absorbed all interest ; in fact, 
it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions, 
with whom I have had such merry hours, seem to 
reproach me for removing my lot from among them. 
They were pleasant creatures ; but to the anxieties 
of business, and a weight of possible worse ever 
impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Oilman 
gave me my certificates ; I laughed at the friendly 
lie implied in them. But my sister shook her head, 
and said it was all true. Indeed, this last winter I 
was jaded out; winters were always worse than 
other parts of the year, because the spirits are 
worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 285 

daylight evenings. The rehef was hinted to me 
from a superior power when I, poor slave, had not 
a hope but that I must wait another seven years 
with Jacob ; and lo ! the Rachel which I coveted 
is brought to me. 



LXXXVII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

April 6, 1825. 

Dear B. B., — My spirits are so tumultuary with 
the novelty of my recent emancipation that I have 
scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to 
compose a letter. I am free, B. B., — free as air ! 

" The little bird that wings the sky 
Knows no such liberty." ^ 

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four 
o'clock. I came home forever ! 

I have been describing my feelings as well as I 
can to Wordsworth in a long letter, and don't care 
to repeat. Take it, briefly, that for a few days I 
was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change ; but 
it is becoming daily more natural to me. I went 
and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' 
desk yester- morning ; and, deuce take me, if I had 
not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink 
fellows, merry, sociable lads, — at leaving them in 

1 " The birds that wanton in the air 
Know no such liberty," 

Lovelace. 



286 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the lurch, fag, fag, fag ! The comparison of my 
own superior feUcity gave me anything but pleasure. 
B. B., I would not serve another seven years for 
seven hundred thousand pounds ! I have got-^441 
net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, with a 
provision for Mary if she survives me. I will live 
another fifty years ; or if I live but ten, they will be 
thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time in them, 

— /. e., the time that is a man's own. Tell me how 
you like " Barbara S. ; " ^ will it be received in atone- 
ment for the foolish '' Vision," — I mean by the 
lady? A propos, I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my 
life ; nevertheless, it 's all true of somebody. 

Address me, in future, Colebrooke Cottage, Isling- 
ton. I am really nervous (but that will wear off) ; 
so take this brief announcement. 
Yours truly, 

C. L. 

LXXXVIII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

July 2, 1825. 

I AM hardly able to appreciate your volume 
now ; ^ but I liked the dedication much, and the 
apology for your bald burying grounds. To Shelley 

— but that is not new. To the young Vesper- 
singer, Great Bealings, Playford, and what not. 

If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious 
consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a 

1 The Elia essay. Fanny Kelly was the original of 
"Barbara S." 

'^ Barton's volume of Poems. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 287 

sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you 
were forever losing Friends' children by death, and 
reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do 
children die so often and so good in your parts? 
The topic taken from the consideration that they 
are snatched away from possible vanities seems 
hardly sound ; for to an Omniscient eye their con- 
ditional failings must be one with their actual. But 
I am too unwell for theology. 

Such as I am, 
I am yours and A. K.'s truly, 

C. Lamb. 



LXXXIX. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

August 10, 1825. 
We shall be soon again at Colebrooke. 

Dear B. B., — You must excuse my not writing 
before, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, 
where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a letter. 
It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk 
with you and Anne Knight quietly at Colebrooke 
Lodge over the matter of your last. You mistake 
me when you express misgivings about my relishing 
a series of Scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly ; 
what I meant to say was, that one or two consola- 
tory poems on deaths would have had a more 
condensed effect than many. Scriptural, devo- 
tional topics, admit of infinite variety. So far 
from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, 



288 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the 
Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or two 
together sometimes, without sense of weariness. 

I did not express myself clearly about what I 
think a false topic, insisted on so frequently in con- 
solatory addresses on the death of infants. I know 
something like it is in Scripture, but I think hu- 
manly spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet 
fallacy, to the survivors, but still a fallacy. If it 
stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary 
state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to 
whom possibility must be clear as act, must know of 
the child what it would hereafter turn out : if good, 
then the topic is false to say it is secured from fall- 
ing into future wilfulness, vice, etc. If bad, I do 
not see how its exemption from certain future overt 
acts by being snatched away at all tells in its favor. 
You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger 
of a pickpurse ; but is not the guilt incurred as 
much by the intent as if never so much acted? 
Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a 
hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think was 
complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of provi- 
dence. The very notion of a state of probation has 
darkness in it. The All-knower has no need of 
satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when 
he knows before what we will do. Methinks we 
might be condemned before commission. In these 
things we grope and flounder ; and if we can pick 
up a little human comfort that the child taken is 
snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by 
the by) , let us take it. And as to where an untried 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 289 

child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders 
who have borne the heat of the day, — fire- purified 
martyrs and torment-sifted confessors, — what know 
we? We promise heaven, methinks, too cheaply, 
and assign large revenues to minors incompetent to 
manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of 
consolation till the very frequency induces a cheap- 
ness. Tickets for admission into paradise are sculp- 
tured out a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, etc. 
It is all a mystery ; and the more I try to express 
my meaning (having none that is clear), the more I 
flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, 
which to you is the unerring judge, deems best, and 
be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked 
notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant 
country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. 
Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed 
a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of De- 
spond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, 
like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It 
had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that 
is bad. Both our kind remeful^rances to Mrs. K. 
and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy, — is it 
Lucy, or Ruth ? — that gathers wise sayings in a 
Book. 

C. Lamb. 

XC. 

TO SOUTHEY. 

August 19, 1S25. 

Dear Southey, — You 'U know whom this letter 
comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as 

19 



290 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

in the good old times. I never could come into the 
custom of envelopes, — 't is a modern foppery ; the 
Plinian correspondence gives no hint of such. In 
singleness of sheet and. meaning, then, I thank you 
for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil 
of thanks for your " Book of the Church." I scarce 
feel competent to give an opinion of the latter ; I 
have not reading enough of that kind to venture at 
it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with 
attention and interest. Being, as you know, not 
quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church 
taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, 
Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation 
downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, 
Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a humor 
to touch these matters. May all our churches 
flourish ! Two things staggered me in the poem 
(and one of them staggered both of us) : I cannot 
away with a beautiful series of verses, as I protest 
they are, commencing " Jenner." 'T is like a 
choice banquet opened with a pill or an electuary, — 
physic stuff. T' other is, we cannot make out how 
Edith should be no more than ten years old. By 'r 
Lady, we had taken her to be some sixteen or up- 
wards. We suppose you have only chosen the round 
number for the metre. Or poem and dedication 
may be both older than they pretend to, — but then 
some hint might have been given ; for, as it stands, 
it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish 
reckoning. But without inquiring further (for 't is 
ungracious to look into a lady's years), the dedica- 
tion is eminently pleasing and tender, and we wish 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 291 

Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, 
struck us as if we had heard of the death of John 
May. A John May's death was a few years since in 
the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, 
prettiest things we have seen. You have been tem- 
perate in the use of locahties, which generally spoil 
poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot 
stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fire- 
flies. A tree is a Magnolia, etc. — Can I but like 
the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest 
the Papist's erring creed," — which and other pass- 
ages brought me back to the old Anthology days 
and the admonitory lesson to " Dear George " on 
"The Vesper Bell," a little poem which retains its 
first hold upon me strangely. 

The compliment to the translatress is daintily 
conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writ- 
ing than to bring in some remote, impossible paral- 
lel^ — as between a great empress and the inobtrusive, 
quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so persever- 
ingly through that rugged Paraguay mine. How 
she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender 
Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanc- 
tion Landor's unfeeling allegorizing away of honest 
Quixote? He may as well say Strap is meant to 
symbolize the Scottish nation before the Union, and 
Random since that Act of dubious issue ; or that Part- 
ridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston 
typifies the Woman upon Many Waters. Gebir, in- 
deed, may mean the state of the hop markets last 
month, for anything I know to ihe contrary. That 
all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as 



292 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that 
Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them ; 
nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might 
not multiply them, deeply as he was tinctured with 
the essence of them. Quixote is the father of gentle 
ridicule, and at the same time the very depository 
and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, 
when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant 
only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate 
Second Part, with the confederacies of that unworthy 
duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes 
sacrificed his instinct to his understanding. 

We got your little book but last night, being at 
Enfield, to which place we came about a month 
since, and are having quiet holidays. Mary walks 
her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty 
on others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you 
know ; the change works admirably. 

For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one- 
act farce ^ going to be acted at Haymarket ; but 
when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and 
like enough to follow "Mr. H." "The London 
Magazine " has shifted its publishers once more, and 
I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My 
ambition is not at present higher than to write non- 
sense for the playhouses, to eke out a something 
contracted income. Tempus erat. There was a 
time, my dear Cornwallis, when the muse, etc. But 
I am now in Mac Flecknoe's predicament, — 

" Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce." 

1 Probably "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," which happily 
was not destined to be performed. — Ainger. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 293 

Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks 
since) than he has been for years. His accomplish- 
ing his book at last has been a source of vigor to 
him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at 
a Mrs. Leishman's, Enfield, but expect to be at 
Colebrooke Cottage in a week or so, where, or 
anywhere, I shall be always most happy to receive 
tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height of an 
uxorious paradise. His honeymoon will not wane 
till he wax cold. Never was a more happy pair, 
since Acme and Septimius, and longer. Farewell, 
with many thanks, dear S. Our loves to all round 

your Wrekin. 

Your old friend, 

C. Lamb. 



XCI. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

March 20, 1826. 
Dear B. B., — You may know my letters by the 
paper and the folding. For the former, I live on 
scraps obtained in charity from an old friend, whose 
stationery is a permanent perquisite ; for folding, I 
shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my neckcloths. 
I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on 
ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and 
hangers. Sealing-wax I have none on my estabhsh- 
ment ; wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. 
When my epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, 
however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, 
judicious reflections, etc., his gilt post will bribe 



294 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

over the judges to him. All the time I was at the 
E. I. H. I never mended a pen ; I now cut 'em to 
the stumps, marring rather than mending the primi- 
tive goose-quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I 
used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his 
first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Meso- 
potamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting 
upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so* many 
for nothing. When I write to a great man at the 
court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked 
note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with 
no sweet degrees of envelope. I never enclosed 
one bit of paper in another, nor understood the 
rationale of it. Once only I sealed with borrowed 
wax, to set Walter Scott a-wondering, signed with 
the imperial quartered arms of England, which my 
friend Field bears in compliment to his descent, in 
the female line, from Oliver Cromwell. It must 
have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. 
To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to 
Mr. Robinson's last speech, where, if you can find a 
solution, I cannot. I think this, though, — the best 
ministry we ever stumbled upon, — gin reduced four 
shillings in the gallon, wine two shillings in the 
quart ! This comes home to men's minds and 
bosoms. My tirade against visitors was not meant 
particularly at you or Anne Knight. I scarce know 
what I meant, for I do not just now feel the griev- 
ance. I wanted to make an article. So in another 
thing I talked of somebody's insipid wife without a 
correspondent object in my head ; and a good lady, 
a friend's wife, whom I really love (don't startle, I 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 295 

mean in a licit way) , has looked shyly on me ever 
since. The blunders of personal application are 
ludicrous. I send out a character every now and 
then on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my 
friends. " Popular Fallacies " will go on ; that word 
" concluded " is an erratum, I suppose, for " con- 
tinued." I do not know how it got stuffed in there. A 
little thing without name will also be printed on the 
ReHgion of the Actors ; but it is out of your way, so 
I recommend you, with true author's hypocrisy, to 
skip it. We are about to sit down to roast beef, at 
which we could wish A. K., B. B., and B. B.'s 
pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much 
for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated 
for droppers-in from Woodbridge ; the sky does not 
drop such larks every day. My very kindest wishes 
to you all three, with my sister's best love. 

C. Lamb. 



XCII. 

TO J. B. DIBDIN. 

June, 1826. 

Dear D., — My first impulse upon seeing your 

letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat hand, 

nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the 

clerical ; my second, a thought natural enough this 

hot weather : Am I to answer all this ? Why, 't is as 

long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put 

together : I have counted the words, for curiosity. 

... I never knew an enemy to puns who was not 

an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the coach 



296 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me he did 
not see much in Shakspeare. I rephed, I daresay not. 
He felt the equivoke, looked awkward and reddish, 
but soon returned to the attack by saying that he 
thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare. I said 
that I had no doubt he was, — to a Scotchman. We 
exchanged no more words that day. . . . Let me 
hear that you have clambered up to Lover's Seat ; it 
is as fine in that neighborhood as Juan Fernandez, — 
as lonely, too, when the fishing-boats are not out ; I 
have sat for hours staring upon a shipless sea. The 
salt sea is never as grand as when it is left to itself. 
One cock-boat spoils it ; a seamew or two improves 
it. And go to the little church, which is a very Prot- 
estant Loretto, and seems dropped by some angel 
for the use of a hermit who was at once parishioner 
and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, 
bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant 
it in my garden. It must have been erected, in the 
very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or 
three first converts, yet with all the appurtenances 
of a church of the first magnitude, — its pulpit, its 
pews, its baptismal font ; a cathedral in a nutshell. 
The minister that divides the Word there must give 
lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of 
"two or three assembled in my name." It reminds 
me of the grain of mustard-seed. If the glebe-land 
is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tithes 
out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its 
First fruits must be its Last, for 't would never pro- 
duce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, 
and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 297 

The still small voice is surely to be found there, if 
anywhere. A sounding-board is merely there for 
ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more 
from sanctity than size, for 't would feel a mountain 
thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. 
Go and see, but not without your spectacles. 



XCIII. 

TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON. 

January 20, 1827. 
Dear Robinson, — I called upon you this morn- 
ing, and found that you had gone to visit a dying 
friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor 
Norris ^ has been lying dying for now almost a week, 
— such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a 
strong constitution ! Whether he knew me or not, 
I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor 
glazed eyes ; but the group I saw about him I shall 
not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were assem- 
bled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf 
Richard, his son, looking doubly stupefied. There 
they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the 
week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. 
Norris. Speaking was impossible in that mute 
chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with 
him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make 
up. He was my friend and my father's friend all 
the life I can remember. I seem to have made 
foolish friendships ever since. Those are friend- 

1 Randal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, an 
early friend of the Lambs. 



298 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

ships which outUve a second generation. Old as I 
am waxing, in his eyes 1 was still the child he first 
knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I 
have none to call me Charley now. He was the last 
link that bound me to the Temple. You are but of 
yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plain- 
ness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he 
knew nothing of, nor did his reading extend beyond 
the pages of the " Gentleman's Magazine." Yet 
there was a pride of literature about him from being 
amongst books (he was librarian), and from some 
scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in 
his office of entering students, that gave him very 
diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the eru- 
dite look with which, when he had been in vain 
trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in 
the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that 
*' in those old books, Charley, there is sometimes 
a deal of very indiiferent spelling ; " and seemed to 
console himself in the reflection ! His jokes — for 
he had his jokes — are now ended ; but they were old 
trusty perennials, staples that pleased after decies 
repetita, and were always as good as new. One 
song he had, which was reserved for the night of 
Christmas Day, which we always spent in the Temple. 
It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat-bottoms 
of our foes and the possibility of their coming over 
in darkness, and alluded to threats of an invasion 
many years blown over; and when he came to 
the part — 

" We '11 still make 'em run; and we '11 still make 'em sweat, 
In spite of the devil and 'Brussels Gazette,'" — 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 299 

his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an 
impending event. And what is the "Brussels 
Gazette " now? I cry while I enumerate these 
trifles. " How shall we tell them in a stranger's 
ear? " His poor good girls will now have to receive 
their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an 
obscure village in Herts, where they have been long 
struggling to make a school without effect ; and 
poor deaf Richard — and the more helpless for 
being so — is thrown on the wide world. 

My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling 
on you, was to ask if you were enough acquainted 
with any of the Benchers to lay a plain statement 
before them of the circumstances of the family. I 
almost fear not, for you are of another hall. But if 
you can oblige me and my poor friend, who is now 
insensible to any favors, pray exert yourself. You 
cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his 
poor wife. Yours ever, 

Charles Lamb. 

XCIV. 

TO PETER GEORGE PATMORE. 

LONDRES,yz///V IQif/z, 1827. 

Dear P., — I am so poorly. I have been to a 
funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of 
the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I 
can't describe to you the howl which the widow set 
up at proper intervals. Dash ^ could ; for it was not 
unlike what he makes. 

1 A dog given to Lamb by Thomas Hood. See letter to 
Pattrrre dated September, 1827. 



300 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

The letter I sent you was one directed to the 
care of Edward White, India House, for Mrs. Haz- 
litt. Which Mrs. H. I don't yet know ; but Allsop 
has taken it to France on speculation. Really it 
is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. 
late H., and Mrs. John H. ; and to which of the 
three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. I 
wanted to open it, but 'tis transportation. 

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I 
would strongly recommend you to take for one story 
Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can 
think of no other. 

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and 
stands up on his hind legs. He misses Becky, who 
is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other 
day, and he could n't eat his vittles after it. Pray 
God his intellectuals be not slipping. 

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 't is 
no use to ask you to come and partake of ^ 'em ; 
else there is a steam vessel. 

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have 
got on tolerably ; but it will be refused, or worse. I 
never had luck with anything my name was put to. 

Oh, I am so poorly ! I waked it at my cousin's 
the bookbinder, who is now with God ; or if he is 
not, 'tis no fault of mine. 

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with 
Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her. 

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them if you can. 
They are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought 
nicer. 

How sick I am ! — not of the world, but of the 
Widow Shrub. She 's sworn under ;^6,ooo ; but I 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. ZO\ 

think she perjured herself. She howls in E la, and 
I comfort her in B flat. You understand music? 

If you haven't got Massinger, you have nothing to 
do but go to the first Bibhotheque you can hght 
upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition) ; 
and if they haven't got it, you can have '^ Athalie," 
par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But 
that "Old Law" is delicious. 

" No shrimps ! " (that 's in answer to Mary's ques- 
tion about how the soles are to be done.) 

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may 
reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God 
knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage ? So 
I do, — to Dover. 

We had a merry passage with the widow at the 
Commons. She was howling, — part howling, and 
part giving directions to the proctor, — when crash ! 
down went my sister through a crazy chair, and 
made the clerks grin, and I grinned, and the widow 
tittered, and then I knew that she was not inconso- 
lable. Mary was more frightened than hurt. 

She 'd make a good match for anybody (by she, 
I mean the widow). 

" If he bring but a relict away, 
He is happy, nor heard to complain." 

Shenstone. 

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of 
his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; 
but I think it rather an agreeable excrescence, — 
like his poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged him- 
self for debt. Godwin was taken up for picking 



302 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pockets. Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our 
nut-brown maid. Becky takes to bad courses. Her 
father was blown up in a steam machine. The 
coroner found it " insanity." I should not like him 
to sit on my letter. 

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic, 
classical? Do try and get some frogs. You must 
ask for " grenouilles " (green eels). They don't 
understand "frogs," though 'tis a common phrase 
with us. 

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire 
if Old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from 
the Crusades. He must be a very old man. 



xcv. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

August 10, 1827. 

Dear B. B., — I have not been able to answer 
you, for we have had and are having (I just snatch 
a moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled 
from society, full of company, — some staying with 
us ; and this moment as I write, almost, a heavy im- 
portation of two old ladies has come in. Whither 
can I take wing from the oppression of human 
faces? Would I were in a wilderness of apes, toss- 
ing cocoa-nuts about, grinning and grinned at ! 

Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my engrav- 
ing ; 't is a little sixpenny thing,^ too like by half, in 

1 An etching of Lamb, by Brooke Pulham, which is said 
to be the most characteristic likeness of him extant. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 303 

which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid 
flattery. There have been two editions of it, which 
I think are all gone, as they have vanished from the 
window where they hung, — a print-shop, corner 
of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, — where any London friend of yours may 
inquire for it ; for I am (though you won't under- 
stand it) at Enfield Chase. We have been here 
near three months, and shall stay two more, if 
people will let us alone ; but they persecute us from 
village to village. So don't direct to Islington 
again till further notice. I am trying my hand at a 
drama, in two acts, founded on Crabbe's " Con- 
fidant," 7niitatis mutandis. You like the Odyssey : 
did you ever read my " Adventures of Ulysses," 
founded on Chapman's old translation of it? For 
children or men. Chapman is divine, and my 
abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divin- 
ity. When you come to town I '11 show it you. 
You have well described your old-fashioned grand 
paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's ear- 
liest recollections are of some such place? I had 
my Blakesware [Blakesmoor in the "London"]. 
Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion ; 
better if un — or partially — occupied, — peopled 
with the spirits of deceased members of the county 
and justices of the quorum. Would I were buried 
in the peopled solitudes of one, with my feelings at 
seven years old ! Those marble busts of the em- 
perors, they seemed as if they were to stand for- 
ever, as they had stood from the living days of 
Rome, in that old marble hall, and I too partake of 



304 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

their permanency. Eternity was, while I tliought 
not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are 
toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble 
old dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a 
grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, es- 
caped the scythe only by my littleness. Even now 
he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean 
wipe me out, perhaps. Well ! 



XCVI. 

TO THOMAS HOOD. 

September i8, 1827. 

Dear Hood, — If I have anything in my head, I 
will send it to Mr. Watts. Strictly speaking, he 
should have all my album-verses ; but a very inti- 
mate friend importuned me for the trifles, and I be- 
lieve I forgot Mr. W^atts, or lost sight at the time of 
his similar " Souvenir." Jamieson conveyed the 
farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble ; he will not be 
in town before the 27th. 

Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell 
them that we have finally torn ourselves outright 
away from Colebrooke, where I had no health, and 
are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where 
I have experienced good. 

" Lord, what good hours do we keep ! 
How quietly we sleep ! " 1 

See the rest in the " Compleat Angler." 
1 By Charles Cotton. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 305 

We have got our books into our new house. I 
am a dray-horse if I was not ashamed of the in- 
digested, dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the 
cart, and blessed Becky that came with 'em for her 
having an unstuffed brain with such rubbish. We 
shall get in by Michael's Mass. 'T was with some 
pain we were evulsed from Colebrooke. 

You may find some of our flesh sticking to the 
doorposts. To change habitations is to die to 
them ; and in my time I have died seven deaths. 
But I don't know whether every such change does 
not bring with it a rejuvenescence. 'T is an enter- 
prise, and shoves back the sense of death's approxi- 
mating, which, though not terrible to me, is at all 
times particularly distasteful. My house-deaths 
have generally been periodical, recurring after seven 
years j but this last is premature by half that time. 
Cut off in the flower of Colebrooke ! The Middle- 
tonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even 
minnows dwindle. A parvis Jiujtt minimi / 

I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, 
lest she should envy it, and hate us. But when we 
are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I 
heard she and you were made uncomfortable by 
some unworthy-to-be-cared-for attacks, and have 
tried to set up a feeble counteraction through the 
" Table Book " of last Saturday. Has it not reached 
you, that you are silent about it? Our new domi- 
cile is no manor-house, but new, and externally not 
inviting, but furnished within with every conve- 
nience, — capital new locks to every door, capital 
grates in every room, with nothing to pay for in- 

20 



3o6 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

coming, and the rent £^\o less than the IsUngton 
one. 

It was built, a few years since, at ;2^i,.too ex- 
pense, they tell me, and I perfectly believe it. 
And I get it for ;£35, exclusive of moderate taxes. 
We think ourselves most lucky. 

It is not our intention to abandon Regent Street 
and West End perambulations (monastic and terrible 
thought!), but occasionally to breathe the fresher 
air of the metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom 
or two (all we want) for occasional ex- rustication, 
where we shall visit, — not be visited. Plays, too, 
we '11 see, — perhaps our own ; Urbani Sylvani and 
Sylvan Urbanuses in turns ; courtiers for a sport, 
then philosophers ; old, homely tell-truths and 
learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield, liars 
again and mocking gibers in the coffee-houses and 
resorts of London. What can a mortal desire more 
for his bi-parted nature? 

Oh, the curds-and-cream you shall eat with us 
here ! 

Oh, the turtle- soup and lobster-salads we shall 
devour with you there ! 

Oh, the old books we shall peruse here ! 

Oh, the new nonsense we shall trifle over there ! 

Oh, Sir T. Browne, here ! 

Oh, Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan, there ! 

Thine, 
C. (URBANUS) L. (SYLVANUs) — (Elia ambo) . 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 307 

XCVII. 

TO P. G. PATMORE. 

September, 1827. 

Dear P., — Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash ? 
I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules 
and was improving; but Dash came uppermost. 
The order of our thoughts should be the order of 
our writing. Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore ? Are 
his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in 
his conversation. You cannot be too careful to 
watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The 
first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him ! 
All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the 
overseers ; but I protest they seem to me very 
rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful 
as mad people, to those who are not used to them. 
Try him with hot water ; if he won't lick it up, it 's 
a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag 
horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided 
the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general 
deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased, 
for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be 
too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? 
If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curi- 
osity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say 
all our army in India had it at one time ; but that 
was in Hyde7^-K\\Ys time. Do you get paunch for 
him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might 
pull his teeth out (if he would let you), and then you 
need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. 



3oS LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It 
might amuse Mrs. P. and the children. They'd 
have more sense than he. He 'd be like a fool 
kept in a family, to keep the household in good 
humor with their own understanding. You might 
teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. 
Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. " My, how 
he capers ! " {^In the margin is written " One of 
the children speaks this^) . . . What I scratch out 
is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of 
rabid animals ; but I remember you don't read 
German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it 
stand. The meaning in English is : " Avoid to 
approach an animal suspected of madness, as you 
would avoid fire or a precipice," — which I think is 
a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly 
profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion 
arises in your breast that all is not right with him, 
muzzle him and lead him in a string (common 
packthread will do ; he don't care for twist) to 
Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he '11 take 
him in at any time. You may mention your sus- 
picion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may 
wound, or not, Mr. H.'s feeHngs. Hood, I know, 
will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration 
of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if 
you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear 
you. Besides, you will have discharged your con- 
science, and laid the child at the right door, as 
they say. 

We are dawdling our time away very idly and 
pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 309 

where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold 
meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor ; but 
that, you know, does not make her one. I know a 
jailor (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady. 
Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P.'s regi- 
men. I send my love in a to Dash. 

C. La]mb. 



XCVIII. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

October 11, 1828 
A SPLENDID edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim ! ^ Why, 
the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. 
His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart 
cocked beaver and a jemmy cane ; his amice gray 
to the last Regent Street cut; and his painful 
palmer's pace to the modern swagger ! Stop thy 
friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done 
for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but 
good a style as possible, — the Vanity Fair and the 
Pilgrims there ; the silly-soothness in his setting- 
out countenance ; the Christian idiocy (in a good 
sense) of his admiration of the shepherds on the 
Delectable mountains ; the lions so truly allegorical, 
and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's ; the 
great head (the author's), capacious of dreams and 
similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you 
don't know my edition, what I had when a child. 

1 An edition de luxe, illustrated by John Martin, and 
with an Introduction by Southey. See Macaulay's review 
of it. 



3IO LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, 
enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, 
accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans's pen? 
Oh, how unlike his own ! 

" Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy? 
Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly ? 
Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation ? 
Or else be drowned in thy contemplation ? 
Dost thou love picking meat ? or wouldst thou see 
A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee ? 
Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep ? 
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep ? 
Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, 
And find thyself again without a charm ? 
Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what, 
And yet know whether thou art blest or not 
By reading the same lines ? Oh, then come hither. 
And lay my book, thy head, and heart together." 

Show me any such poetry in any one of the fifteen 
forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness 
'yclept " Annuals." So there 's verses for thy 
verses ; and now let me tell you that the sight of 
your hand gladdened me. I have been daily trying 
to write to you, but [have been] paralyzed. You 
have spurred me on this tiny effort, and at intervals 
I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits 
have been in an oppressed way for a long time, and 
they are things which must be to you of faith, for 
who can explain depression? Yes, I am hooked 
into the "Gem," but only for some lines written on 
a dead infant of the editor's,^ which being, as it 
were, his property, I could not refuse their ap- 
pearing ; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, 

1 Hood's. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 311 

the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked 
up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through 
all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of 
emulation, the immodest candidateship. Brought 
into so little space, — in those old " Londons," a 
signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper 
coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them), — in short, 
I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile 
genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood ! 
He has fifty things in hand, — farces to supply the 
Adelphi for the season ; a comedy for one of the 
great theatres, just ready; a whole entertainment 
by himself for Mathews and Yates to figure in ; a 
meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly 
done by himself. You 'd like him very much. 

Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces an- 
nounced in one of 'em, not our " Gem." W. Scott 
has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 
'em. Of all the poets, Gary ^ has had the good 
sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with clergy-gentle- 
manly right notions. Don't think I set up for being 
proud on this point ; I like a bit of flattery, tickling 
my vanity, as well as any one. But these pompous 
masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) 
I hate. So there 's a bit of my mind. Besides, 
they infallibly cheat you, — I mean the booksellers. 
If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's 
being my friend. Goleridge has lately been here. 
He too is deep among the prophets, the year-ser- 
vers, — the mob of gentleman annuals. But they '11 
cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun 
1 The translator of Dante. 



312 • LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had 
yesterday having washed their own faces clean with 
their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore 
Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of En- 
field, which I hope to show you at some time when 
you can get a few days up to the great town. Be- 
lieve me, it would give both of us great pleasure to 
show you our pleasant farms and villages. 

We both join in kindest loves to you and yours. 

C. Lamb redivivtis. 



XCIX. 

TO PROCTER. 

yanuary 22, 1829. 
Don't trouble yourself about the verses. Take 
'em coolly as they come. Any day between this and 
midsummer will do. Ten lines the extreme. There 
is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen 
you, though you may not have observed a silent 
brown girl, who for the last twelve years has ram- 
bled about our house in her Christmas holidays. 
She is Italian by name and extraction.^ Ten lines 
about the blue sky of her country will do, as it 's her 
foible to be proud of it. Item, I have made her 
a tolerable Latinist. She is called Emmalsola. I 
shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I 
will assuredly see you. I will put in here loves to 

1 Emma Isola, Lamb's ward, daughter of one of the Esquire 
Bedells of Cambridge University, and granddaughter of an 
Italian refugee. The Lambs had met her during one of their 
Cambridge visits, and finally adopted her. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 313 

Mrs. Procter and the Anti-Capulets [Montagus], 
because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last. 
I like to see my friends here. I have put my law- 
suit into the hands of an Enfield practitioner, — a 
plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, 
and gives me hopes of a favorable result. 

Rumor tells us that Miss Holcroft is married. 
Who is Baddams? Have I seen him at Montacute's? 
I hear he is a great chemist. I am sometimes 
chemical myself. A thought strikes me with horror. 
Pray Heaven he may not have done it for the sake 
of trying chemical experiments upon her, — young 
female subjects are so scarce ! An't you glad about 
Burke's case? We may set off the Scotch mur- 
ders against the Scotch novels, — Hare the Great 
Unhanged.-^ 

Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing. He 
is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which 
an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas ! 
descending. I am out of the literary world at pres- 
ent. Pray, is there anything new from the admired 
pen of the author of "The Pleasures of Hope"? 
Has Mrs. He-mans (double masculine) done any- 
thing pretty lately? Why sleeps the lyre of Hervey 
and of Alaric Watts ? Is the muse of L. E. L. silent ? 
Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last ? ^ 
Curious construction ! Elaborata facilitas / And 
now I '11 tell. 'Twas written for "The Gem ; " but 
the editors declined it, on the plea that it would 
shock all mothers ; so they published " The Widow " 

1 Burke and Hare, the Edinburgh resurrection-men. 
'2 The Gypsy's Malison. 



314 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

instead. I am born out of time. I have no con- 
jecture about what the present world calls delicacy. 
I thought "Rosamund Gray" was a pretty modest 
thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not 
bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent char- 
acter. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 
" Damn the age ; I will write for Antiquity 1 " 

EjTatum in sonnet. Last line but something, for 
"tender" read "tend." The Scotch do not know 
our law terms, but I find some remains of honest, 
plain old writing lurking there still. They were not 
so mealy mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe, 
't is their oatmeal. 

Blackwood sent me £,20 for the drama. Some- 
body cheated me out of it next day ; and my new 
pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first 
putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, " All tailors 
are cheats, and all men are tailors." Then I was 
better. 

C. L. 

C. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

Enfield Chase Side, 
Saturday, z^th of July, A. D. 1829, 1 1 A. M. 

There ! a fuller, plumper, juicier date never 

dropped from Idumean palm. Am I in the date- 

ive case now ? If not, a fig for dates, — which is 

more than a date is worth. I never stood much 

affected to these limitary specialities, — least of all, 

since the date of my superannuation. 

" What have I with time to do ? 
Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you." 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 3^5 

Dear B B.,— Your handwriting has conveyed 
much pleasure to me in respect of Lucy's restora- 
tion. Would I could send you as good news of my 
poor Lucy ' ^ But some wearisome weeks I must 
remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time 
near ten weeks, broken by a short apparition of 
Emma for her holidays, whose departure only deep- 
ened the returning solitude, and by ten days I have 
passed in town. But town, with all my native han- 
kering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the 
shops, are left, but all old friends are gone. And 
in London I was frightfully convinced of this as 
I passed houses and places, empty caskets now. 
I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The 
bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. 
My old clubs, that lived so long and flourished so 
steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of 
our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas 
heavy unfeeling rain, and I had nowhere to go. 
Home have I none, and not a sympathizing house 
to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters 
of heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I 
tried ten days at a sort of a friend's house ; but it was 
large and straggling, — one of the individuals of my 
old long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant com- 
panions, that have tumbled to pieces, into dust and 
other things ; and I got home on Thursday, con- 
vinced that I was better to get home to my hole at 
Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. 
Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. 
She is at Fulham, looking better in her health than 
1 Mary Lamb. 



3i6 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing any 
pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should 
come again. But the old feelings will come back 
again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game 
of piquet again. But 't is a tedious cut out of a 
life of fifty- four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks 
every year or two. And to make me more alone, our 
ill-tempered maid is gone, who, with all her airs, was 
yet a home-piece of furniture, a record of better 
days ; the young thing that has succeeded her is 
good and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have 
no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding 
and quarrelling have something of familiarity and a 
community of interest ; they imply acquaintance ; 
they are of resentment, which is of the family 
of dearness. 

I bragged formerly that I could not have too 
much time ; I have now a surfeit. With few years 
to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is 
not eternal. Something will shine out to take the 
load off that flags me, which is at present intoler- 
able. I have killed an hour or two in this poor 
scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and 
would kill him inch-meal just now. But the snake 
is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon. 'T is 
the present copy of my countenance I send, and to 
complain is a little to alleviate. May you enjoy 
yourself as far as the wicked world will let you, and 
think that you are not quite alone, as I am ! Health 
to Lucia and to Anna, and kind remembrances. 

Your forlorn C. L. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 317 



CI. 

TO MR. GILLMAN. 

November 30, 1829. 
Dear G., — The excursionists reached home and 
the good town of Enfield a Httle after four, without 
sUp or dislocation. Little has transpired concern- 
ing the events of the back- journey, save that on 
passing the house of 'Squire Melhsh, situate a stone 
bow's cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood,^ with 
a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, " I cannot 
think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy 
they have taken flight somewhere; but I have 
missed them two or three years past." All this 
while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the 
rookery was darkening the air above with undimin- 
ished population, and deafening all ears but his with 
their cawings. But nature has been gently with- 
drawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas 
Westwood's senses, from the time he began to miss 
the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life 
in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the 
minimum which is consistent with gentihty, yet a 
star among the minor gentry, receiving the bows of 
the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms-women 
daily. Children venerate him not less for his exter- 
nal show of gentry than they wonder at him for a 

1 Lamb's landlord. He had driven Mary Lamb over to see 
Coleridge at Highgate. The Lambs had been compelled, by 
the frequent illnesses of Mary Lamb, to give up their house- 
keeping at Enfield and to take lodgings with the Westwoods. 



3l8 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amount- 
ing to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump 
of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 
'T is a throne on which patience seems to sit, — the 
proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping 
with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life 
have sat, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the 
angusticE dojuiis with dexterity. Life opened upon 
him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a 
rider or traveller for a wholesale house, in which ca- 
pacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that be- 
fell him, — one especially, how he rode a mad horse 
into the town of Devizes ; how horse and rider ar- 
rived in a foam, to the utter consternation of the 
expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers, etc. It seems 
it was sultry weather, piping-hot ; the steed tor- 
mented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being 
roadworthy : but safety and the interest of the house 
he rode for were incompatible things ; a fall in serge 
cloth was expected ; and a mad entrance they made 
of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or 
partially ; or whether a certain personal defiguration 
in the man part of this extraordinary centaur (non- 
assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce 
the conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not 
with 'skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. The 
hosier that was burned with his shop in Field Lane, 
on Tuesday night, shall have passed to heaven for 
me like a Marian Martyr, provided always that he 
consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short 
ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken 
his state degrees of martyrdom in fof-md in the 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB 3^9 

market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as 
acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, 
the fact is indisputable, that this composition was 
seen flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry 
may yet remember its passing through his town, if 
his scores are not more faithful than his memory. 

To come from his heroic character, all the amia- 
ble qualities of domestic life concentre in this tamed 
Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of grog ; 
just as pleasant without it ; laughs when he hears a 
joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears it 
not ; sings glorious old sea-songs on festival nights ; 
and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, 
Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us as old 
Norris, rest his soul ! was after fifty. To him and 
his scanty literature (what there is of it, soimd) have 
we flown from the metropoHs and its cursed annual- 
ists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink 
press of that stagnant pool. 



CII. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

January 22, 1830. 
And is it a year since we parted from you at the 
steps of Edmonton stage ? There are not now the 
years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled 
age of men, reported of successional mankind, is 
true of the same man only. We do not live a year 
in a year now. 'T is a punctiim stans. The seasons 



320 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor 
winter heightens our gloom ; autumn hath foregone 
its moraUties, — they are " heypass repass," as in a 
show-box. Yet, as far as last year, occurs back — 
for they scarce show a reflex now, they make no 
memory as heretofore — 't was sufficiently gloomy. 
Let the sullen nothing pass. Suffice it that after sad 
spirits, prolonged through many of its months, as it 
called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a 
farewell of the pompous, troublesome trifle called 
housekeeping, and are settled down into poor board- 
ers and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the 
Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have 
nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them, with 
the garden but to see it grow, with the tax-gatherer 
but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear 
her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are 
things unknown to us, save as spectators of the pa- 
geant. We are fed we know not how, — quietists, 
confiding ravens. We have the otium pro digni- 
tate, a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self- 
condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some 
molesting yearnings of hfe not quite killed rise, 
prompting me that there was a London, and that I 
was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleet 
Market ; but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die 
hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. 
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. 
What by early hours and moderate meals? A total 
blank. Oh, never let the lying poets be believed 
who 'tice men from the cheerful haunts of streets, 
or think they mean it not of a country village. In 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 32 1 

the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up to soli- 
tude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers ; 
but to have a little teasing image of a town about 
one, country folks that do not look like country 
folks, shops two yards square, half-a-dozen apples 
and two penn'orth of over-looked gingerbread for 
the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street, and for the im- 
mortal book and print stalls a circulating library that 
stands still, where the show-picture is a last year's 
Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten 
Scotch novels has not yet travelled (marry, they 
just begin to be conscious of the " Redgauntlet "), to 
have a new plastered flat church, and to be wishing 
that it was but a cathedral ! The very blackguards 
here are degenerate, the topping gentry stock- 
brokers ; the passengers too many to insure your 
quiet, or let you go about whistling or gaping, — too 
few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet 
Street. Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter is 
yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. 
Among one's books at one's fire by candle, one is 
soothed into an oblivion that one is not in the 
country ; but with the light the green fields return, 
till I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into 
St. Giles's. Oh, let no native Londoner imagine 
that health and rest and innocent occupation, inter- 
change of converse sweet and recreative study, can~ 
make the country anything better than altogether 
odious and detestable. A garden was the primi- 
tive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and 
boldness luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence 
followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London ; haber- 

21 



322 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

dashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epi- 
grams, puns, — these all came in on the town part 
and the thither side of innocence. Man found out 
inventions. From my den I return you condolence 
for your decaying sight, — not for anything there is 
to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure 
of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as 
well to listen to ; anything high may — nay, must 
be read out ; you read it to yourself with an imagi- 
nary auditor : but the light paragraphs must be glid 
over by the proper eye ; mouthing mumbles their 
gossamery substance. 'Tis these trifles I should 
mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single 
gleam of comfort I receive here ; it comes from rich 
Cathay with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not 
attend to it, read out by the most beloved voice. 
But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. Oh, for 
the coUyriura of Tobias enclosed in a whiting's liver, 
to send you, with no apocryphal good wishes ! The 
last long time I heard from you, you had knocked 
your head against something. Do not do so ; for 
your head (I do not flatter) is not a knob, or the 
top of a brass nail, or the end of a ninepin, — un- 
less a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a " Re- 
cluse " out of it ; then would I bid the smirched god 
knock, and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker ! 
Mary must squeeze out a line propria inami ; but 
indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous to 
letter- writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you 
all to hear that, though I fret like a lion in a net, 
her present health and spirits are better than they 
have been for some time past ; she is absolutely 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 323 

three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since 
we have adopted this boarding plan. 

Our providers are an honest pair, Dame Westwood 
and her husband, — he, when the light of prosperity 
shined on them, a moderately thriving haberdasher 
within Bow bells, retired since with something under 
a competence; writes himself parcel-gentleman; 
hath borne parish offices ; sings fine old sea-songs at 
threescore and ten ; sighs only now and then when 
he thinks that he has a son on his hands about 
fifteen, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out 
into the world, and then checks a sigh with mutter- 
ing, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be 
heard, '•' I have married my daughter, however;" 
takes the weather as it comes ; outsides it to town in 
severest season; and o' winter nights tells old stories 
not tending to literature (how comfortable to au- 
thor-rid folks !), and has one ancedote, upon which 
and about forty pounds a year he seems to have 
retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider 
in his youth, travelling for shops, and once (not to 
balk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in 
August, rode foaming into Dunstable ^ upon a mad 
horse, to the dismay and expostulatory wonderment 
of inn-keepers, ostlers, etc., who declared they would 
not have bestrid the beast to win the Derby. Un- 
derstand the creature galled to death and despera- 
tion by gad-flies, cormorant-winged, worse than 
beset Inachus's daughter. This he tells, this he 
brindles and burnishes, on a winter's eve ; 't is his 
star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant 
1 See preceding letter. 



324 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

upon. Far from me be it {dii avertant !) to look a 
gift-story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as 
those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the 
inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the cen- 
taur-phenomenon that staggered all Dunstable, might 
have been the effect of unromantic necessity; that 
the horse-part carried the reasoning willy-nilly; 
that needs must when such a devil drove ; that cer- 
tain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas 
Westwood, unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance 
more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his 
fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall 
dismount Bellerophon. But in case he was an in- 
voluntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he 
buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, 
and adopted his flames, let accident and him share 
the glory. You would all like Thomas Westwood. 
[ ] ^ How weak is painting to describe a 

man ! Say that he stands four feet and a nail high 
by his own yard-measure, which, Hke the sceptre of 
Agamemnon, shall never sprout again, still, you have 
no adequate idea ; nor when I tell you that his dear 
hump, which I have favored in the picture, seems 
to me of the buffalo, — indicative and repository of 
mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, — still, you 
have not the man. Knew you old Norris of the 
Temple, sixty years ours and our father's friend? 
He was not more natural to us than this old West- 
wood, the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. 
Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but 
that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a 

1 Here was inserted a sketch answering to the description. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 325 

Londoner ! Well, if we ever do move, we have 
encumbrances the less to impede us ; all our furni- 
ture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going 
for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodi- 
gal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless 
us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we 
must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, 
bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome ; advices to 
that effect have reached Bury. But by solemn 
legacy he bequeathed at parting (whether he should 
live or die) a turkey of Suffolk to be sent every 
succeeding Christmas to us and divers other friends. 
What a genuine old bachelor's action ! I fear he 
will find the air of Italy too classic. His station is 
in the Hartz forest ; his soul is be-Goethed. Miss 
Kelly we never see, — Talfourd not this half year; 
the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his 
children, God forgive me, I have utterly forgotten : 
we single people are often out in our count there. 
Shall I say two? We see scarce anybody. Can 
I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? 
Excuse particularizing. 

C. L. 

CIH. 

TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

May 24, 1830. 

Mary's love ? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well. 

Dear Sarah, — I found my way to Northaw on 
Thursday and a very good woman behind a coun- 
ter, who says also that you are a very good lady, 
but that the woman who was with you was naught. 



326 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

We travelled with one of those troublesome 
fellow- passengers in a stage-coach that is called 
a well-informed man. For twenty miles we dis- 
coursed about the properties of steam, probabilities 
of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and more 
than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of es- 
caping my torment by getting up on the outside, 
when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, 
spying some farming land, put an unlucky question 
to me, — What sort of a crop of turnips I thought 
we should have this year? Emma's eyes turned to 
me to know what in the world I could have to say ; 
and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, maugre 
her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest 
gravity, I replied that it depended, I believed, upon 
boiled legs of mutton. This clenched our conver- 
sation ; and my gentleman, with a face half wise, 
half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversa- 
tion, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder 
of the journey. 

Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to 
the full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity that 
he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as 
he is) by wisdom ! He talked on Music \ and 
by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was 
enabled to talk of names, and show more knowl- 
edge than he had suspected I possessed ; and in 
the end he begged me to shape my thoughts upon 
paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him 
" Free Thoughts on Some Eminent Composers." 

" Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 
Just as the whim bites. For my part, 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 327 

I do not care a farthing candle 

For either of them, or for Handel/' etc. 

Martin Burney ^ is as odd as ever. We had a dis- 
pute about the word " heir," which I contended 
was pronounced Uke " air." He said that might 
be in common parlance, or that we might so use 
it speaking of the " Heir-at-Law," a comedy ; but 
that in the law-courts it was necessary to give it 
a full aspiration, and to say Hayer ; he thought 
it might even vitiate a cause if a counsel pro- 
nounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he "would 
consult Serjeant Wilde," who gave it against him. 
Sometimes he falleth into the water, sometimes 
into the fire. He came down here, and insisted 
on reading Virgil's " y^neid " all through with me 
(which he did), because a counsel must know 
Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel 
of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very 
emphatic in a court of justice. A third time he 
would carve a fowl, which he did very ill favoredly, 
because we did not know how indispensable it 
was for a barrister to do all those sort of things 
well. Those httle things were of more conse- 
quence than we supposed. So he goes on, har- 
assing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. 
With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one, — 
harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel 
look to him? He deserves one, — maybe he has 
tired him out. 

I am tired with this long scrawl; but I thought 

1 Martin Burney, originally a solicitor, had lately been 
called to the Bar. 



328 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

in your exile you might like a letter. Commend 
me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, and tell the 
devil I humbly kiss my hand to him. 

Yours ever, C. Lamb. 



CIV. 

TO GEORGE DYER. 

December 20, 1830. 
Dear Dyer, — I would have written before to 
thank you for your kind letter, written with your 
own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will 
give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, 
we are in tolerable health and spirits once more. 
Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her 
night's lodging at Miss Buffam's, but found she was 
too late for the stage. If she comes to town before 
she goes home, she will not miss paying her re- 
spects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires 
best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peace- 
able hitherto, that has caught an inflammatory fever, 
the tokens are upon her ; and a great fire was blaz- 
ing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer 
about half a mile from us. Where will these things 
end? There is no doubt of its being the work 
of some ill-disposed rustic ; but how is he to be 
discovered? They go to work in the dark with 
strange chemical preparations unknown to our fore- 
fathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have 
a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are 
past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, 
undream'd of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford's 



LETTERS OE CHARLES LAMB. 329 

Inn, where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks 
worth the burning. Pray keep as Uttle corn by you 
as you can, for fear of the worst. 

It was never good times in England since the 
poor began to speculate upon their condition. 
Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection 
as horses ; the whistling ploughman went cheek by 
jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped 
carries a box of phosphorus in his leather breeches ; 
and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast 
steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and 
half the country is grinning with new fires. Farmer 
Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that 
he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in 
flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude 
brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that 
something is wrong in the social system ; what a 
hellish faculty above gunpowder ! 

Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted, we shall 
see who can hang or burn fastest. It is not always 
revenge that stimulates these kindlings. There is 
a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disre- 
spected clod that was trod into earth, that was 
nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined into 
an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the 
earth and their growers in a mass of fire ! What 
a new existence; what a temptation above Luci- 
fer's ! Would clod be anything but a clod if he 
could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last 
night for a whole country, — a bonfire visible to 
London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking 
the Monument with an ague fit : all done by a 



33° LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

little vial of phosphor in a clown's fob ! How he 
must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, 
the Vulcanian epicure ! Can we ring the bells 
backward? Gan we unlearn the arts that pretend 
to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a 
march of Science : but who shall beat the drums 
for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that 
phosphor will not ignite? 

Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns pro- 
portionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man 
and beast would sputter out and reject like those 
apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the 
inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot 
rolls may say, " Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, 
et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good 
old munching system may last thy time and mine, 
good un-incendiary George, is the devout prayer 

of thine, to the last crust, 

Ch. Lamb. 



GV. 

TO DYER. 

February 22, 1831. 

Dear Dyer, — Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rogers's 
friends are perfectly assured that you never in- 
tended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that 
in the revivification of it by blundering Barker you 
had no hand whatever. To imagine that, at this 
time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expres- 
sion of more than thirty years' standing, would be 
to suppose him indulging his " Pleasures of Memory " 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 33^ 

with a vengeance. You never penned a line which 
for its own sake you need, dying, wish to blot. 
You mistake your heart if you think you can write 
a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses.' Your 
spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the 
vicious, — abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. 
But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the 
consciousness of having committed a compliment 
as another man would at the perpetration of an 
affront. But do not lug me into the same soreness 
of conscience with yourself. I maintain, and will 
to the last hour, that I never writ of you but con 
amore; that if any allusion was made to your near- 
sightedness, it was not for the purpose of mocking 
an infirmity, but of connecting it with scholar-like 
habits, — for is it not erudite and scholarly to be 
somewhat near of sight before age naturally brings 
on the malady? You could not then plead the 
obrepens senectus. Did I not, moreover, make it an 
apology for a certain absence, which some of your 
friends may have experienced, when you have not 
on a sudden made recognition of them in a casual 
street-meeting ; and did I not strengthen your excuse 
for this slowness of recognition by further account- 

1 Talfourd relates an amusing instance of the universal 
charity of the kindly Dyer. Lamb once suddenly asked him 
what he thought of the murderer Williams,- a wretch who 
had destroyed two families in Ratcliff Highway, and then 
cheated the gallows by committing suicide. " The desperate 
attempt," savs Talfourd, "to compel the gentle optnnist to 
speak ill of 'a mortal creature produced no happier success 
than the answer, ' Why, I should think,^Mr. Lamb, he must 
have been rather an eccentric character.' " 



332 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

ing morally for the present engagement of your mind 
in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person, make 
the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people 
that was ever made ? If these things be not so, I 
never knew what I wrote or meant by my writing, 
and have been penning libels all my life without 
being aware of it. Does it follow that I should have 
expressed myself exactly in the same way of those 
dear old eyes of yours now, — now that Father 
Time has conspired with a hard taskmaster to put a 
last extinguisher upon them ? I should as soon have 
insulted the Answerer of Salmasius when he awoke 
up from his ended task, and saw no more with 
mortal vision. But you are many films removed 
yet from Milton's calamity. You write perfectly 
intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of the 
same size or tallness ; but that only shows your pro- 
ficiency in the hands, — text, german-hand, court- 
hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You 
pen better than you did a twelvemonth ago ; and if 
you continue to improve, you bid fair to win the 
golden pen which is the prize at your young gentle- 
men's academy. 

But don't gb and lay this to your eyes. You 
always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to come up 
to the mystical notations and conjuring characters 
of Dr. Parr. You never wrote what I call a school- 
master's hand, like Mrs. Clarke ; nor a woman's 
hand, like Southey ; nor a missal hand, like Porson ; 
nor an all-on-the-wrong-side sloping hand, like Miss 
Hayes ; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and- Persian, peremp- 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 333 

tory hand, like Rickman : but you wrote what I call 
a Grecian's hand, — what the Grecians write (or 
wrote) at Christ's Hospital ; such as Whalley would 
have admired, and Boyer ^ have applauded, but Smith 
or Atwood [writing-masters] would have horsed you 
for. Your boy- of- genius hand and your mercantile 
hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think 
you never learned to make eagles or cork-screws, or 
flourish the governor's names in the writing-school ; 
and by the tenor and cut of your letters, I suspect 
you were never in it at all. By the length of this 
scrawl you will think I have a design upon your 
optics ; but I have writ as large as I could, out of 
respect to them, — too large, indeed, for beauty. 
Mine is a sort of Deputy-Grecian's hand, — a little 
better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, 
but still remote from the mercantile. I don't know 
how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since 
school-days ; I can never forget I was a Deputy- 
Grecian. And writing to you, or to Coleridge, 
besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as 
to Grecians still.^ I keep my soaring way above 
the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the other. 
Alas ! what am I now ? What is a Leadenhall clerk 
or India pensioner to a Deputy-Grecian? How art 
thou fallen, O Lucifer ! Just room for our loves to 

Mrs. D., etc. 

C. Lamb. 

^ Whalley and Boyer were masters at Christ's Hospital. 
2 " Deputy-Grecian,V " Grecian," etc., were of course forms, 
or grades, at Christ's Hospital. 



334 LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

CVI. 

TO MR. MOXON.^ 

February^ 1832. 
Dear Moxon, — The snows are ankle-deep, slush, 
and mire, that 't is hard to get to the post-office, and 
cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of de- 
spair, or I should sooner have thanked you for your 
offer of the " Life," which we shall very much like 
to have, and will return duly. I do not know when 
I shall be in town, but in a week or two at farthest, 
when I will come as far as you, if I can. We are 
moped to death with confinement within doors. I 
send you a curiosity of G. Dyer's tender conscience. 
Between thirty and forty years since, George pub- 
Hshed the " Poet's Fate," in which were two very 
harmless lines about Mr. Rogers ; but Mr. R. not 
quite approving of them, they were left out in a 
subsequent edition, 1801. But George has been 
worrying about them ever since ; if I have heard 
him once, I have heard him a hundred times ex- 
press a remorse proportioned to a consciousness of 
having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the 
devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his 
" Parriana " has quoted the identical two lines as 
they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, 
and the withers of poor George are again wrung, 
His letter is a gem ; with his poor blind eyes it has 

1 Lamb's future publisher. He afterwards became the 
husband of \.-3iXdki's protegee, Emma Isola. 



LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 335 

been labored out at six sittings. The history of the 
couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in 
which every variety of shape and size that letters 
can be twisted into is to be found. Do show his 
part of it to Mr. Rogers some day. If he has 
bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly 
charactered of a contrite sinner. G. was born, I 
verily think, without original sin, but chooses to 
have a conscience, as every Christian gentleman 
should have ; his dear old face is insusceptible of 
the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of 
being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he 
makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an 
affront, — a name is personality. But show (no hur- 
ry) this unique recantation to Mr. Rogers : 't is like a 
dirty pocket-handerchief mucked with tears of some 
indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sin- 
cerity m every pot-hook and hanger ; and then the 
gilt frame to such a pauper picture ! It should go 
into the Museum. 



evil. 

TO MR. MOXON. 

July 24, 1833. 

For God's sake give Emma no more watches ; 
one has turned her head. She is arrogant and in- 
sulting. She said something very unpleasant to our 
old clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time ; 
and yet he had made her no appointment. She 



33^ LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

takes it out every instant to look at the moment- 
hand. She lugs us out into the fields, because 
there the bird-boys ask you, " Pray, sir, can you tell 
us what 's o'clock?" and she answers them punc- 
tually. She loses all her time looking to see '' what 
the time is." I overheard her whispering, '"Just so 
many hours, minutes, etc., to Tuesday ; I think St. 
George's goes too slow." This little present of 
Time, — why, 't is Eternity to her ! 

What can make her so fond of a gingerbread 
watch ? 

She has spoiled some of the movements. Be- 
tween ourselves, she has kissed away " half-past 
twelve," which I suppose to be the canonical hour 
in Hanover Square. 

Well, if " love me, love my watch," answers, she 
will keep time to you. 

It goes right by the Horse-Guards. 

Dearest M., — Never mind opposite nonsense. 
She does not love you for the watch, but the watch 
for you. I will be at the wedding, and keep the 
30th July, as long as my poor months last me, as a 
festival gloriously. 

Yours ever, 

Elia. 



THE END. 






/ ^' I 



